Hello everyone.
As I’ve said, exhibitions at Division Gallery are, among other things, intended to be essays of a kind, speaking to concerns particular to contemporary art and its world at large. One pressing concern I’d like to address with respect to younger artists – emerging artists I’ll call them – is how to develop the quality of their art, and somehow at the same time make enough of a career at it to justify continuing, while gaining some momentum of the kind that will secure a professional future. The most travelled path leading towards a solution to these problems, at least in our society, is art school. We go there both to improve and to prove ourselves.
But unlike in most other disciplines, where approved bodies of knowledge and skill are the norm, in the Fine Arts (where no such clear standards exist) a more esoteric kind of knowledge prevails; by what exact kind of understanding we gain it can be unclear, at the same time as being pretty much obvious to everyone. Success in the marketplace can come in baffling and infrequent doses, even for those who find popular admiration for their work. Some version of peer review (called ‘critique’ in art school) is therefore essential to young artists, who vet one another’s work and ideas in ways that come very naturally to artists. Quality control is the immediate purpose; mutual influence though, is often the further result. When this influence yields good results in the studio, exciting things can follow in the art world.
Our second show, called Team Studio, opens tonight, May 30th. It has to do with all these questions and some possible attempts at answers; it speaks humourously and elegantly to the issue at hand. We hope you’ll come take a look.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Klein
Director
