Remote Control

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 10, 2:00 - 5:00pm
First Friday Reception: Friday, January 6, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Remote Control envisages the myriad manifestations of the approach of bodies and beings to form: the ways that material and memory (individual, collective) speak to and reign over one another—remotely or directly— reciprocally determining the ontological potential of each in turn. In the context of the technological overflow of our contemporary moment, “remote control” signals the invisible, unpredictable, frequently image-based forces that occupy lived and psychic experience. But the words contain another meaning: to control remotely, barely or from afar. This is a relationality that is abstracted and tenuous. As meanings shifts, it morphs, opening up spaces for play, experimentation, and productive tensions. 

The work of the four artists on view —Danielle Cartier (MFA candidate, Department of Fine Arts), Christopher Richards (MFA candidate, Department of Fine Arts), Alex Snowden (MFA candidate, Department of Fine Arts), Kasey Toomey​ (MFA candidate, Department of Fine Arts)— variously investigates these questions of control. Danielle Cartier puts the histories of painting and printmaking in conversation, constructing a visual dialogue through collage that absorbs the anxieties of our image-saturated world and the forms it projects onto and into our visual space. Christopher Richards’ multimedia work expands concepts of frame to question the influence of technology and “screen culture” over language and subjectivity. In her large sculptural works, Alex Snowden probes the effects of memory and kinship and the way that color, material, and form echo and analogize past experiences and relationships. The intentionality and language of objects inform Kasey Toomey’s artwork and writing, in which he expands the limits of an object’s use and our lived experience of it, confusing the approach and undermining the “control” of the viewer. 

Remote Control is co-curated by Jessica Hough (MA candidate, Art History) and Francesca Richman (MA candidate, Art History) as part of Penn's Incubation Series.