Architectonics Show (Small Format)
A group exhibition exploring architectures of care.
Architectonics is the scientific study of architecture, or simply “musical, literary, or artistic structure.”
This exhibition’s name points to the infrastructural, political-economic context of all art-making, while simultaneously signaling that art objects have a tenuous capacity to structure themselves.
Facing a second Trump term and a R.I. state legislature controlled by extractive corporate interests, consistently uninterested in building structures – from debt and utility relief programs to affordable housing – that support and serve our most vulnerable and hyper-policed community members, it’s become increasingly clear we have to organize ourselves from the ground up to form a better world. In many ways, this is precisely the aim of Small Format, as a cooperatively-run and -owned queer cafe, gallery, and third space. Only by getting our hands dirty – whether with espresso grounds, bike grease, or oil paint – can we create a more democratic, communal, and interdependent city.
Building and sustaining equitable infrastructure is imperative for Providence. As major development interests continue to commercialize and non-profitize D.I.Y., underground arts community in the city – from the razing of legendary collective Fort Thunder to the state’s first commercial tenants union’s ongoing fight to save affordable studio and community space at Atlantic Mills from out-of-state privatization – this show asks how artistic production engages, interrogates, and remakes the structures around us. From the architectural egalitarianism of the Bauhaus and socialist modernism to the utopian, diagrammatic experiments and installations of the Eco-Art movement, art has played a central role in radical planning, communization, and spatial organization across the globe. Submissions need not present a pragmatic, legible, or precise model – destructuring, dissolution, abstraction, and improvisation can be just as architectural as building towards the sky. Works that display, narrate, or represent their construction, creation, or design, and those that forward the failure of art as a blueprint, vision, or plan, are equally welcome. Some preliminary ideas to guide what you send us: grids, repetition, perspective, assembly line, facade, copying, cartography, instructions, infographics, painting-as-sculpture or installation, cross-section, Mark Bradford, Walter Gropius, Hélio Oiticica, the Constructivists, Jake Tobin, Peña Salinas.
Artworks must be ready to hang, but do NOT have to be for sale. We are open to accepting work of all media, including video, within the limitation of the space. There will be an opening reception in mid-March, providing an opportunity for live performance; please feel free to submit examples of your work and let me know (through the google form and/or via contacting @kolyashields on Instagram) if you’re interested in performing then. Small Format takes 50% commission on all art sales – including 10% donated to the Atlantic Mills Tenant’s Union Legal Fund – so please keep this in mind if pricing your work. All pieces must be able to hang on the wall or from the ceiling, but this does not mean they have to be two dimensional.
