GREGORY BENNETT

RECONSTELLATION

"They are the men—anywhere, at any time—who have looked up at the unanswering heavens, and asked, "What and whence and why are those lights in the sky?", who have looked down at the unanswering Earth, and asked, “What is this air I breathe that is around the Earth and within it, in its secret caves? What is Earth? And what am I?"

—Edna Kenton, The Book Of Earths (1928)

Like a collector of stars, we found the Great Dipper, Cysnus the Swan, Aquila the Eagle, and many others in the sky. But stars do not constitute themselves into constellations. We have positioned them on our maps, analyzed their effects on Earth, and learned from them. For thousands of years, by identifying, framing, and naming the stars, we humans have been trying to insert ourselves into the unknown, making the universe tangible and relational. Their images are framed, drawn, and connected with myths and stories that bind them to our seasons, agriculture, religion, and life.

Just like the stars, ideas and phenomena are broken fragments reconfigured in a constellation, creating the context relative to their being. The act of framing a constellation is a process of meaning-making in which these fragments are transformed from one context to another. A constellation, or what we think is a constellation, is result of a process of constant framing and re-framing the unknown. And yet each frame captured is also a fragile inverted layer of how we see our own images.

ReConstellation is a group exhibition in which each artwork sparks its own light into the stories of the stars.

Featuring Artists:
Gregory Bennett
Carla Gannis
Justin Petropoulos
Snow Yunxue Fu
John Monteith

Curated by Snow Yunxue Fu, Tie Jojima, and Nhung Walsh. Collaborating with Miyeon Kwon, AXIS, and Prak-sis Art Association.