Curated by Jonathan Rider

“One can deduce and conclude that every object has two aspects: one current one, which we see nearly always and which is seen by men in general; and the other, which is spectral and metaphysical and seen only by rare individuals in a moment of clairvoyance…” – Giorgio de Chirico [1]

The exhibition Dime-Store Alchemy features 24 contemporary artists who elevate everyday objects through the framing devices of cabinets, shelves, and containers. Contextualized within the broader legacy of artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) and his celebrated box constructions, this selection of artworks, and their safeguarded contents, addresses issues of identity, value, memory, and time. Artists include Kader Attia, Nayland Blake, Matthew Buckingham, Sophie Calle, Francis Cape, Mark Dion, Vincent Fecteau, Tony Feher, Ryan Gander, Robert Gober, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Damien Hirst, Josh Kline, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Josephine Meckseper, Portia Munson, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Shaver, Haim Steinbach, Robert Therrien, Nicole Wermers, and Rachel Whiteread. 

“The genius of Cornell,” wrote poet John Ashbery on the artist’s 1967 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, “is that he sees, and enables us to see, with the eyes of childhood, before our vision got clouded by experience, when objects like a rubber ball or a pocket mirror seemed charged with meaning, and a marble rolling across a wooden floor could be as portentous as a passing comet.”[2] This spirit of re-seeing runs throughout each of the pieces in Dime-Store Alchemy—a phrase borrowed from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic’s beguiling book of short prose on Cornell.

Artworks by Vincent Fecteau, Curtis Talwst Santiago, and Carolee Schneemann are most directly related to Cornell’s dreamlike box constructions, which utilize found containers as the setting for their theatrical dioramas. Other artists push the boundaries of what could be considered a container: Ryan Gander’s suitcase and carry-on rendered in ghostly white marble; Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt’s dollar store lasagna pans-cum-bejeweled Catholic reliquaries; and Nicole Wermers’s baby changing station resurfaced in polished terrazzo. Susan Hiller combines spiritual and physical healing in her collection of sacred holy water, while Tony Feher’s suspended kickline of plastic bottles, and Damien Hirst’s cigarette butts meticulously arranged in a glass vitrine, each magnify items that are often disregarded.

Featuring thousands of saccharine pink products collected over 25 years, Portia Munson’s room-sized installation—itself a cabinet of curiosity—functions as both a portrait of femininity and excessive consumerism. Some works are autobiographical in nature: Sophie Calle memorializes her birthday gifts as evidence of her relationships and mortality, while Francis Cape traces his own career through a pair of impregnable wooden cabinets, cobbled from elements of his previous exhibitions.

About:

Jonathan Rider (b. 1983, Easton, PA) is a New York-based artist, curator, and the Associate Director at The FLAG Art Foundation. Rider previously worked as Assistant Curator at Art in General from 2011-14, where he curated exhibitions of international contemporary artists including Youmna Chlala, Antanas Gerlikas, Alex Ito, Jong Oh, Marija & Petras Olšauskai, Lisi Raskin, The Still House Group, among others. Recent independent curatorial projects include PLACE: Monumental Drawings by Dawn Clements, Cynthia Lin, Gelah Penn, Fran Siegel, Equity Gallery, New York, NY (2016), co-curated with Gelah Penn, and Martin Weinstein: Platonia, MSW Studio, New York, NY (2016). Rider received a BA from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, in 2005, and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, in 2011. His artwork has been has been shown in recent exhibitions, including Vitel Tonné, The Pool NYC, Venice, Italy (2017); Chaos/Control, MW Project Space, New York, NY (2017); Barely There, Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, NY (2015); 2015:1947, Equity Gallery, New York, NY (2015); among others.

Footnotes:

[1] Giorgio de Chirico, Sull’arte metafsica, in Scritti/1. Romanzi e scritti critici e teorici 1911-1945, edited by A. Cortellessa, Bompiani, Milan 2008, p. 289.
[2] Ashbery, John. “Cornell: The Cube Root of Dreams.” ARTnews, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Summer 1967), pp. 56-59.

Press:

“This astonishing exhibition should not be perceived just as an homage to Joseph Cornell but as an important survey on an important phenomenon present in modern and contemporary art practices”

— Balasz Takac, WideWalls

“This is a motif throughout Dime-Store Alchemy — that we might do well to give more thought and care to the everyday trappings of our lives. Nicole Wermers makes the case by filling a plastic baby-changing unit with a precious material, cast terrazzo; Nancy Shaver paints small cardboard boxes that once held crackers and household items. What these artists know is that it’s a matter of framing. Once ordinary objects are placed in extraordinary contexts, they don’t look quite the same.”

—Jillian Steinhauer, The New York Times