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Ishmael Randall Weeks: COLLECTIVE MEASURE

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Post date:2024-09-20

Updates:2024-09-20

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Ishmael Randall Weeks: COLLECTIVE MEASURE
Event Time
Wed.- Sun. 13:00~ 18:00
Event Location
No.5, Lane 67, Section 1, Jinshan S.Rd, Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City Taiwan, R.O.C
“…What happens to an archeological space, the way that we’ve abused it, the way that we consider it, the way that it relates to architectural thought or urbanistic thought of a city – is something that interests me.” 

– Ishmael Randall-Weeks

Ishmael Randall-Weeks’ work reflects on the relationship between architecture and its social context. His work ranges from complex, large-scale installations to more intimately sized objects, including site-specific installations, sculptures, and works on paper. By borrowing formal and material bases of everyday elements his work initiates conversations around urbanism, education, and time. The use of construction materials that have been used for centuries—from pre-Columbian cultures to the legacies of Modernism— is part of his interest in engaging in a dialogue about the collective through form and materiality.

In COLLECTIVE MEASURE, the transformative physical movements such as straining, extending, and folding, that are formally captured in the objects Randall-Weeks creates, seem to mirror the tendencies in the mechanisms of human thinking. The mediating spaces, translucent barriers, and permeable divisions that these works create project an imaginary window where temporal and geographical distances collapse, enabling us to rethink the relationship between past and present. This relationship to time and its elusive nature are layered in his exploration of various temporalities, and sometimes directly addresses timelessness itself, as seen in his choice of artwork titles - but in essence, aims to trace a more equitable political, cultural, and social horizon for the future.

On view in this exhibition, works like Concreto and Carpeta contain books, pencils, chalk and chalkboards - tools that Weeks transforms into symbols of acquiring and dictating knowledge. The books and pencils embedded into the concrete, however, obstruct or contain the access to any knowledge hinting at the complexities and power dynamics inherent in it.

Chalkboard Biombo and Biombo Collective Measure tell tales of cultural appropriation. The word biombo is a Hispanization of the Japanese byobu, which means “protection from wind.” The first byobus arrived in Latin America in the early 1600s and quickly became highly coveted luxury items. Originating in China, these screens are made of separate folding panels hinged together and were used in homes to divide or enclose interior spaces. Traditionally decorated with landscapes, in Latin America (especially in Mexico), they become platforms to display cityscapes and historical scenes, and consequently, turned into a local tradition that was sustained for centuries to come. Creating biombos of his own, Randall Weeks reveals his interest in the thoughtful or ignorant ways in which we approach, use, abuse, and appropriate history and heritage.

His screens, still movable but deprived of any function, float in front of chalkboards that hang on the wall, only partially covering them with a veil of white tiles, are essentially enigmatic tableaus of privacy, intimacy, protection, seclusion, and revelation.

In essence, and true to his overarching artistic inquiry, many works in the exhibition revolve around the explorations of the characteristics and the notion of space. Whether be the psychology of a space or the limitations and potential expandability of space.

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