On May 30, artist Kristin Bauer’s new works, Untitled Gestures #4 and #5 were installed in two locations at SMoCA; both inside and outside. Bauer explains this body of work in her own words:

“I began making text installations many years ago in mundane, domestic and pedestrian sites with cut paper and vinyl. I began with my garage door, driveway and home staircase, and often created poetic text interventions interacting within the architecture of my artist residency studios. For me the current work is an integration of poetics, conceptual sculpture and community activation. 

For the current installations, I found myself compelled to make this work increasingly accessible to the public, to businesses and others, recently, to try to speak into the vacuum I felt in the absence of physical/energetic connection of artistic exchange.

Untitled Gestures #4 and #5 at SMoCA are both their own independent works and simultaneously part of a whole greater project that began in local storefronts of temporarily shuttered businesses. For this reason, I have used the exact same vinyl for each ‘gesture’ (installation). I used it for its visibility, affordability and accessibility. These works are inspired by the times we find ourselves in and they attempt to facilitate connection and bring the richly intangible uncertainties and desires we share into a physical realm. The text installations work with the architecture, spatial qualities and functionality of the surfaces they are upon, and their dialogue to one another as a foundation to speak poetically to the current energies and emotions of the collective; in a sort of poetic conceptual sculpture of interpersonal relational aesthetics.” 

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