SRISA Contemporary Art Gallery

Exhibition:

Regan Wheat

in formation Landscape Series

the color of the table
December 4- December 19th 2008

installation photo

I began this work after reading John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing” and “Lecture on Something”. These writings explore the relationship between sound and silence within a structure, and the ways in which “the words make/help make the silences”. The text and the spaces inform and engage each other and shape the manner in which something, nothing, and everything are communicated.

In this series of drawings, I work with found images and non-active spaces. I remove the images from their culturally-specific contexts and the non-active spaces from their structure. By de-contextualizing the images and the blank spaces from their referent, I expose the silences of “nothing” hiding in plain site alongside the sounds of “something”.

I work within the given structure of the daily newspaper- within its content of struggle, violence, fear, anger, and desire. By removing the images from their specific stories and the unused spaces framing the information, I re-constitute and re-present what is also always present in the daily bombardment of information—the pauses, the silences, the spaces of non-action, the places outside of relational positioning, outside of culturally-specific codes.

My intention is to shift the focus from the unending blare of the sound of “action” and to find the silences of “non-action” within the everyday voice of the newspaper.

 

                                                                                                I decided to use

only                                quiet sounds             .                                   There seemed to me

to be no truth,                 no good                                in anything big                        in society

 

But quiet sounds                                                          were like loneliness      ,                                  or

love                          or friendship                                                                    Permanent, I thought

,                                     values,                                   independent                  at least from

Life, Time and               Coca-cola                              .

 

                                                            excerpt from "Lecture On Nothing" by John Cage
                                                            originally delivered at the Artists Club in 1949/1950
                                                            and printed in Incontri Musicali, August 1959



installation photo

cleaning up

repeat at a distance


untitled column detail



ends of nothing

sort solve pile

untitled column

ends of nothing sort

untitled paper stone
 

Regan Wheat

2001-2003 M.F.A. CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART
Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture.

Exhibitions
2007 EMERGENT BEHAVIOR. Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College. Allentown, PA.
FROM FLAT TO PHAT. Arts Incubator, Kansas City, MO & Gallery100,Tempe, AZ
2007 THE DRAWING GAMEOn-line collaborative projectwww.thedrawinggame.com
2004 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Steinberg Gallery. St. Louis, MO
FACULTY EXHIBITION. Philip Slein Gallery. St. Louis, MO.2003
GRADUATE DEGREE SHOW. Cranbrook Museum of Art. Bloomfield Hills, MI.
12 AND UNDER. Revolution Gallery. Detroit, MI
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS. Forum Gallery at Cranbrook. Bloomfield Hills, MI.
ZINE SCENE. Orange County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, California.
2002 SMALL DRAWINGS. Small Works Arte Contemporanea Gallery. Florence, Italy.
2002 4 Forum Gallery. Cranbrook Museum. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
2001 emergeNcY Crane Street Studios Building. Long Island City, New York.
ZINE SCENE. Network Gallery. Cranbrook Museum. Bloomfield, Hills, MI.
RE-GENERATION. Gallery Lombardi. Austin, Texas.
2000 IN LOCO. Chiesa Santa Maria del Carmine. Florence, Italy.