MONOMANIA

OPENING: Friday, September 28, 2018 from 7 to 9 PM

SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 - OCTOBER 28, 2018

Curated by Shaun Ellison and Paul Whiting

Bill Adams 
Katherine Bradford 
Huma Bhabha
Shaun Ellison
Jason Fox 
Sky Glabush 
Andy Heckboyd 
Cristina Lama 
Marcio Matos
Rhys Lee 
Jenna Ransom
Jordan Kasey 
Leigh Ruple
Mathew Wong 
Chris Hammerlein
Emil Robinson
Paige Turner-Uribe 
Pam Glick

“Everywhere and in everything I found a disorder that shocked me. His colour-box could hardly contain all those tubes, crowded together and never closed. In spite of all this disorder, this mess, something shone out of his canvases, and out of his talk, too. […] He possessed the greatest tenderness, or rather… altruism.” Paul Gaugin, on Vincent van Gogh.

The works on paper and sculptures brought together in “Monomania” suggest forms of focused passion. Stripped of an overly intellectual, academic veneer, these spontaneous creative acts are both vulnerable and powerful. Their directness and impulsive nature may be taken to relate to the origins of “Monomania,” a nineteenth-century term used as a clinical description of psychiatric subjects who obsessed over one particular area (mono-), with excitement so strong as to become a frenzy (-mania). Here, works on paper are chosen especially because of their immediacy and the accessibility they offer. Even when intended as preparation for work in another medium, they are read in “Monomania” as works unto themselves.