AMoCA Collection | Duet Suites, Teak, brass, steel, photographs, 8.5 x 16 x 14 in, 2004
Detail, Duet Suites
RAIR | 2005-06
Christy Georg | SAnta Fe, NM
Christy Georg is an artist/adventurer who earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art. She has been awarded 20 artist residencies worldwide, and has received grants and awards, including Massachusetts Cultural Council, University of Rhode Island Sea Grant, Blanche Colman Award and the Leighton International Artists Exchange Program. She exhibits widely, having had recent solo exhibitions in the “Alcoves” series at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe and her retrospective 20 Years at the Gardiner Gallery at Oklahoma State University.
I build devices which function either actually, or metaphorically. The collaboration between user and tool results in an experience/experiment; the duo act as a machine. The object may be seen without its user; it's obfuscated intention existing as mere possibilities, in the mind. Is it different than viewing historical devices, with inventions and innovations far removed from our digital world in the 21st century? Upon examination they may reveal information which is certainly obscure and perhaps esoteric.
The work is a 'collection,' classified, ordered, and displayed as a museum: Instruments of Calibration and Ascertainment. Its construction reveals the speculative and subjective nature of ontology, undermining the authority of 'science'. What can one truly ascertain about reality? As modern museums dispense with outmoded taxonomic disciplines and "can mount displays which turn artifact into art objects, to be savoured more than studied," I turn art objects into artifacts, their function apparently expired, their curious intentions to be studied.
The 'present moment' has always evinced a fascinating, modern world at the height of technology. It is an uncanny thing viewed with the benefit of hindsight.
Quote from John Pickstone, "Objects of Modern Medicine" in the book Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome
Roswell Museum and Art Center
Rair exhibition •Christy Georg “instruments of calibration and ascertainment" • October 1 - November 13, 2005
