Soft Opening
March 10th 2019
Soft Opening features four works, all directly positing an idiosyncratic relationship to the environments in which they were created. Made in a field in rural Vermont, inside of a closet in a Brooklyn apartment, in a fitness studio in Austin or directly on a platform, the works deftly navigate these different sites while gesturing towards alternative relationships between bodies and objects. Their temporary convergence outdoors amplify one another, presenting intimate actions here at full volume; out of which a newly synthesized and fluid space is described. Mimicking the verdant landscape with perforated cloth, finding comfort and control in the confinement of a dog cage, animating the inanimate by bathing a stone, inviting an audience to participate in a private moment—the artists in Soft Opening invoke inversions and contradictions to upend expectations of how a body negotiates space.
Soft Opening Featured: Adrien Sun Hall, Peter Clough, Erica Nix, Virginia Lee Montgomery
Stone Pony Cage, 2019
VLM presents a simple, gestural performance with Pony, a cage, and a stone. While speaking soothing words to Stone to bathe her and prepare her for bed, nearby Pony awaits to feed; Pony (the subconscious avatar of Business Witch) drinks dreams.
Pastoral Desire, 2017
ripstop nylon, pastoral landscape, wind, sunlight, projected video
Photos by Ryan Thayer Davis