Shane Hope – Asif Mian – Coralina Meyer – Clive Murphy – Augustus Nazzaro – Matt Sears – David Shrobe – Kate Stone – Justin Randolph Thompson – Siebren Versteeg – Cullen Washington Jr. – Heeseop Yoon

Reception: Sunday, December 14, 4:00 – 7:00 PM

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Distrust That Particular Flavor, a group exhibition curated by Dexter Wimberly. The show highlights new work by a diverse group of artists who are largely concerned with materiality, and the extremes of consumer culture.

In title and concept, Distrust That Particular Flavor references the conflicted relationship between identity and the choice of products or information one consumes. Borrowing ideas from a recent collection of non-fiction writing by novelist William Gibson, the show considers notions of “distrust”, or a healthy skepticism directed toward the news media, its advertisers, and the entertainment industry as a whole. In realizing that the “flavors” (i.e. products or information) offered by these outlets are manipulated, rather than fresh or new – one is left with an awareness of options that are strategically manufactured.

Comprised of paintings, sculpture, video, and new media work, Distrust That Particular Flavor explores temporality, as well as planned obsolescence – the corporate policy of planning or designing products with artificially limited usefulness and lifespan, so that they become obsolete or unfashionable after a certain period of time. By interrogating a vice inherent to technological consumerism, the works on view also address deterioration, instability and perceived value. The exhibition offers an eclectic array of mediums, creating an aesthetically cohesive, yet somewhat disorienting, presentation that mimics the frenetic sensory overload of quickly turned television channels, or the results of an Internet search.

Among the works included: David Shrobe’s Open Mouth Already Mistake, a collage that evokes childhood, pop-culture, and a book on Buddhist teachings; a site-specific wall drawing by Heeseop Yoon that observes obsessive consumerism with piled stacks of accumulated goods; a new installation by Kate Stone titled Renovation 2; live screen-based work by Siebren Versteeg that synthesizes gestures of algorithmic painting and Google image searches; Asif Mian’s expressive Fight or Flight figurative sculpture; readymade inflatables by Clive Murphy that use bloated artifacts of corporate marketing to reflect on hierarchies and the commonplace; a new work by Coralina Meyer titled The Mirror is Your Best Friend (and Other Tales of Disappearance); Terms of Surrender, a sculpture by Justin Randolph Thomson exploring cultural displacement, militancy and solidarity; dark and abstracted minimalist paintings by Augustus Nazzaro; circuit-like 3D-printed paintings by Shane Hope based on molecular models; a Matt Sears sculpture that plays with ideas of exclusion, success, scale and spectacle; and Letters to God, an assemblage by Cullen Washington Jr. that investigates the grid and universal frameworks of interconnectivity.

A fully illustrated exhibition guide will be available December 14 at the gallery and online.