Emmett Ramstad:::Laying in Wait

IC: Emmett Ramstad, ‘Escape to the Country (detail)’, dropped drop ceiling, padded angle bench, cumulous I and II, fluorescent lights, 2018

 

The unpunctuated, endless time of physically being in one place and mentally miles away/nowhere. The dentist asks how your day is while your mouth is wide open and you stare at a waterfall on the ceiling. You check and recheck your email while going pee. The hold music on speakerphone becomes your breakfast soundtrack. Can this space of non-presence or stasis be a place of potential? In this time of political turmoil, which is actually all times, is it possible to have productive waiting?

 

The main floor of HAIR+NAILS gallery has been transformed into an indeterminate waiting room replete with a distorted drop ceiling, a stretched sunrise calendar and a room of tissue boxes. Visitors are invited to “fish” for bodily conveniences such as mints, tampons, and Tylenol through a hole in the floor. Where the upstairs gallery space is about the experience of being physically and mentally unsynched, the basement gallery space brings the needs of the body back into focus with a bathroom installation that includes a television and snacks, and a suite of handmade toilets resembling a familial gathering. Sometimes being a person or supporting a person is purely tending to the needs of the body. 

 

Artist Conversation
Saturday, April 28, 7pm
Emmett Ramstad in a conversation about waiting with artist Molly Scranton (Chicago) and curator Diane Mullin (Weisman Art Museum)
 

 

Gallery Hours
Thursdays/Fridays 3-6, Saturdays/Sundays 1-6 thru May 11 & by appointment