Multimedia artist Kristin Bauer’s new series of text installations—Untitled Gestures (2020)—are poetic phrases that aim to facilitate a feeling of human connection within an atmosphere of concern about physical contact. As part of this series, Bauer created site-specific artworks for the main entry of SMoCA—Untitled Gestures #4—and along an interior curved wall of the Museum—Untitled Gestures #5. The exterior work reads, “AND A SHARED LONGING CONNECTS US,” and the interior text reads, “ACROSS AN EVER SHIFTING TERRAIN.” Bauer’s poetic musings give a sense of hope, while also acknowledging that the future is going to look very different.

The series began during the early days of the shelter-in-place order, when numerous businesses were temporarily closed and people were quarantined to their homes. As an artistic response to the emotional and psychological toll of the pandemic, Bauer began making publicly accessible text installations made from white vinyl and placed in the storefront windows of local businesses. Bauer states that, “I found myself compelled to make this work increasingly accessible to the public—to businesses and others—in response to the incredible isolation of quarantine and shuttered art spaces, trying to speak into the vacuum I felt in the absence of physical/energetic connection of artistic exchange.”

Organized and commissioned by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Curated by Lauren R. O’Connell, assistant curator.

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Untitled Gestures in the Press

PHOENIX Magazine interviewed Kristin Bauer and our assistant curator Lauren R. O’Connell about Untitled Gestures.