Prairie installations and interior
Craig Jun Li’s exhibition 'if' at Prairie aims to begin a romance with the subjunctive. Its main structure consists of 12 boxes of the same dimensions—aligned and punctuated—arranged along the gallery’s walls. Housed within these boxes are automated parts that perform various tasks: some sweat, some push and pull, and some score. During the run of the exhibition, gallerists at Prairie are asked to maintain different forms of caregiving, for visitors and the mechanized installation.
Li’s praxis reads as both in-depth and hard to read. Their installations often investigate what lingers and materializes between the embodied experience and its perception. For example, the interior of the boxes in 'if' reference early 20th-century architectural drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright, scaled up to the dimensions of contemporary construction materials and commercial furniture. What might first appear to be a solid screen on the front of each box is actually a mesh fabric commonly used to cover speakers. With an aesthetic kinship to minimalism and employing materials that register as post-minimalist, the works in 'if' possibly reenact the performativity in what Felix Gonzalez-Torres described as “minimalism in drag.” Or perhaps, the work is less concerned with formalism. Some of the installation’s automated parts constantly repeat their actions, while others perform theirs sporadically. One might regard them as excessive and deceptive. So what exactly is 'if'? To quote Freud, “a thought expressed in the optative has been replaced by a representation in the present tense.” The answer is language.
August 12 - October 1, 2023
Closing reception October 1 from 1-4pm
Friday & Saturday: closed
Sunday: 1-4
