IN, ON, AND AROUND

To be an artist requires imagination, which is defined in the dictionary as “that faculty of mind that forms and manipulates images.” Artists are expected to generate original, never-seen-before images, as if from out of the blue, but only as if, because images wholly untethered to the facts on the ground of the real and existing world risk becoming something other than art—products of “Imagineering,” in the language of the Disney corporation. The artistic imagination is granted a great latitude to stray from things as they are, but outright fantasy marks its limit. The images it gives us to see, even when they take on the guise of castles in the sky, must still be ones that we could conceivably inhabit. Habitation is an underlying theme of this exhibition. It bears the title In, On and Around as a prompt to consider the works featured within it in terms of spatial positioning. These words suggest differing degrees of proximity to or remove from a common center, which might be designated in the broadest sense as “home.” All that falls within its compass—familiar environments, intimate architectures, the furnishings of domestic life, items of everyday use, etc.—is insistently recalled here. What these works share is a fascination with the commonplace, so easily overlooked in the course of our daily routine, and therefore also potentially extraordinary when subject to sustained observation.

Artists:
Matt Brugger  
Coby Cerna  
Matthew Chan  
Tirsa Delate
Alicia Dianne
Erin Eleniak
Anja Honisett
Adrienne Kinsella  
Patricia Lauletta
Jake Martinez  
Hanna Miller
Lauren Moradi
Matthew Nespor
Rory Nester
Garen Novruzyan
Michael Roman  
Stephen Sariñana-Lampson
Christopher Taylor  
Elizabeth Weber

CSUN Art Galleries Address: 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330
Parking Lot: E6
Contact us at (818) 677-2156 or erika.ostrander@csun.edu