WEIRD SCIENCEBjorn CopelandDave HardyMatt HeckertAjay KurianDaria MartinJessica RathAlex SchwederSlavs and TatarsKal SpelletichJeff WilliamsApril 5- May 5 2013Opening: Friday April 5, 6-8 pm‘Weird’ is a common go-to word to describe an artist’s work. Often this is because something relatively normal or naturalized is made weird through the lens of an artwork; or rather, its strangeness is exposed (every object, every idea, has its freak flag). An interesting thing happens when an artist points to science. A surprising or unexpected disposition of a process can come to the fore, or analytic methods channeled to explore aesthetic, political or philosophical areas. Within the scope of this exhibition, artists have included experiments in the natural or material world, or ethno-focused investigations that take for subject matter language, architecture, and social relations. In some ways, the first encodes a worldview, while the second decodes those that we have already. However, this distinction is in no way meant to over-simplify, and there is a shared commonality when man is the measurer.Many of these investigations activate different and hidden modes of a familiar material or space. Dave Hardy uses everyday building supplies – foam, cement, glass – in massive conglomerates that are held together through gravity and tension. Ajay Kurian melts gummy bears, microwaves bars of Ivory soap to reveal the billowy insides, and textures paintings with crystallized sodium borate. Each of these elements has an anecdote. For instance, the preservative in the gelatin of a gummy bear keeps it from ever fully solidifying or breaking down. While interested in our ideas of the organic and synthetic, Kurian also has a way of leveling the playing field between the two. After all, “the things we tend to also tend to us”, and to forget this is to fall into an overly deterministic pattern of thinking.Similarly, for Alex Schweder, the way in which one interacts with one’s living space, the
