Assigned Meaning, Trained Response

Soft Systems Presents
Painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and performance.
March 29 – April 12
Los Angeles

​

"On the conditioning and domestication of the art object"

​

Things are forced to behave in the world, conditioned by expectations and trained by signifiers of meaning, a kind of forced evolution. In this way, art is domesticated by commercial structures. Its meaning and production shaped by material forces. The creative process loses its autonomy¹.

What follows is a consideration of the art object and the new layer of meaning it is given when presented in a gallery. How curation, the viewer, and space operate as sites of projection that condition responses to the work.

​

¹ "By the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental."
— Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

​

The program featured visual art and sound contributions from:
Gabriel Torres Oaxaca, Ika Pearl, Ralston Finney, Miles Winfree, Max Raymond, Kristen Huizar, Lane Sheehy, Paulette S. Hartman, and Repeater Ensemble. 

​

The exhibition will be presented at a DIY apartment gallery in Echo Park, LA.

​