A Reckoning, March 7 - April 13, 2014, Huff Gallery, Louisville, KY
Of Internal Affairs, April 19 - May 30, 2014, New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, New Harmony, IN

Displacement: A Reckoning Of Internal Affairs
By Stacey Reason, Curator

    Displacement is a complex phenomenon that can be translated into many different contexts to ultimately describe when we experience a shift. These shifts happen on many levels and in varying degrees creating a constant flux of conditions that affect our physical, psychological, and emotional situations. Scientists define displacement through the physical exchange of molecules that occur when one substance exerts force on another. Psychologists use displacement to define an unconscious defense mechanism we use to block traumatic events. Through all the different applications and uses of displacement, the characteristic of subjectivity remains a constant. We are constantly subjective to our surroundings, our perceptions, our reactions and the way we carry experiences of displacement in one way or another through life.

    An attempt at understanding the subtle to obvious shifts we experience through factors of displacement is addressed in the work of Displacement, A Reckoning Of Internal Affairs. The artists represented in this exhibition explore – and on occasion create – the condition of displacement using traditional fine art mediums as well as progressive, experimental, and unexpected materials and presentations. The work featured includes an interactive sculpture, a crowd-sourced photography project, digitally and manually layered images, complex geometric shapes in paintings and projections, sound installations, collected samplings both real and fictitious, and observations of place and hypothetical spaces. They evoke everything from discomfort to nostalgia, recognition to disconfigurement. 

    The exhibition itself is subjected to displacement, as it occurs in two places, breaking the confines of the traditional gallery paradigm. The two places – Louisville, KY and New Harmony, IN – are diametrically dissimilar in characteristics and force a consideration of the affects a place can have on an experience, such as viewing an exhibition. The relationship to each place offers a conversational primer to the content of the work within the galleries. The Huff Gallery at Spalding University in Louisville, with the subtitle A Reckoning, features work that has a more succinct attempt at addressing an understanding of displacement itself, and how it directly manifests itself to us and in us. A Reckoning appropriately describes how we cope, react, address, and define displacement. Immediately following the closing of A Reckoning, the second part of this exhibition with the subtitle Of Internal Affairs opens at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. The gallery sits at the heart of a secluded, protected village founded as the first Utopian society in the mid-1800’s. The setting alone evokes a feeling of displacement, as a delightfully eerie sensation is unavoidable when you enter this time capsule of a township. The work featured in Of Internal Affairs focuses on the psychological and metaphysical effects of displacement.

    Considered as a totality, Displacement, A Reckoning of Internal Affairs is a challenging experience of exploration and interaction through the platform of an art exhibition that can take us out of ourselves and into the world and back into ourselves again. The exhibition as a whole raises questions about how we observe and cope with aspects of displacement through a myriad of shifting variables and influences. While many of the selected artists may not have considered displacement as a central theme in their oeuvre, the dialogue created by their participation in this exhibition is proof that the phenomenon of displacement is omnipresent, unavoidable, and a powerful condition and derivative of both waking and subconscious life.

    It is not surprising that notions of displacement are so readily conceivable. Countless historical precedents exist within this topic, as complex as Freudian displacement theory and as elementary as Galileo’s infamous bath discovery. The work in this show ranges in tone from playful to serious, observational to speculative, overt to abstract. The artists collect, layer, diffuse, and project in efforts to carry out their conceptual motivations. The resulting compilation creates an opportunity for us to consider and reflect on aspects of displacement both measurable and intangible through the physical travel and quiet contemplation evoked by this exhibition. - SR