OPENING RECEPTION
JAN 19th, 2012
6-9 pm
547 W 27th
NYC

Man Bartlett
Colin Kilian
Anne Arden McDonald
Bradford Reed
Mary Ann Strandell

curated by Savannah Spirit

What’s most important right now? The connectedness we have with nature, environment, each other and ourselves. The new century screams out loud for a new type of thinking, a different way of seeing things especially how we relate to one another. In the wake of Facebook and other social media outlets, important facets such as face time and eye contact are lost yet these distractions make it safe to hide behind a cloak of wit, banality and 140 characters max. A deeper sense of self in relation to our circumstances comes with interconnectedness and a desire to feel harmonious while so much chaos and disorder fill us everyday.

There have been many different movements in history which challenged individuals to feel and look beyond what is in front of us while keeping a sense of spiritual connectedness in our lives. Mysticism in religion tells us so. In the current Age of Enlightenment we experience events with a careful eye, a greater awareness of our surroundings and what is happening to ourselves in relation to each other. Transcendentalism and The New Thought Movement rooted in the philosophies and teachings of Immanuel Kant, and forward thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman and William Walker Atkinson called for a revolution in the 19th century. The core beliefs of this movement derive from seeking the truth without the doctrines of traditional religion, only to transcend the individual through their intuition and spiritual path. In 1929, Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story titled, “Chains” which explained the idea of 6 degrees of separation, rediscovered by Stanley Milgram at Harvard in 1967. Though Milgram was widely criticized for his failure to connect random people for his “Small World Experiment”, now more than ever we have deduced the idea that six degrees of separation is part of our society and culture. Connectedness with all things is part of who we are.

Symbiotaxiplasm draws participants and viewers in by arranging specific interactions with 3 separate pieces by Man Bartlett (interdisciplinary artist), Bradford Reed (composer), plus an aromatic crowd-sourcing experiment to please the nose. The works of Mary Ann Strandell (painter and multi-media artist), Colin Kilian (painter) and Anne Arden McDonald (photographer), represent movement, chaos, order, change and transformation.