Ripe and Bursting (towards an erotics of decay)

August 24th-September 15th

“What then is decay? Watching a compost heap transform into fertile soil it can seem like decay is genesis. Decay is the first scene in a comedy of mycelial threads and millipedes and sprouting wildflowers, seeds invisibly deposited by a bird flying overhead. Sometimes I think about death as being the transition from a solitary aliveness to an anarchic polyphony of aliveness.”

–Sophie Strand, Confessions of a Compost Heap

“Being in the world is primarily an erotic encounter, an encounter of meaning through contact, an encounter of being oneself through the significance of others—humans, lovers, children, but also other beings, companions and competitors. From birth, and probably even before it, we experience the fundamental erotics of being touched by the world, and of touching it in return, as a life-bestowing power. We experience living exchange as fundamental reality. We long to connect with an other—be it word, skin, food, or air—in order to become ourselves. In this experience, we are not separated from the world, but deeply incorporated into it: feeling parts of the whole, which can thus become transparent to itself in a meaningful way. It is precisely this reality, in all of its creative growth, that we wish to preserve—an expressive, meaningful reality of which we are a part.” 

–Andreas Weber, Why Erotic Ecology?

The erotics of decay is both the anarchic polyphony of aliveness and fundamental to our experience of living exchange, and the connection we seek in order to become ourselves. The edge of desire is where we ripen, where we burst open to the air and waiting world. This spillage, this moment of life overflowing, is the tipping point into decay and the ecstatic dissolution of the self.

This exhibition seeks to engage with eros as a generative force, decay as an agent of aliveness, and art as the medium to explore the possibilities of both.

Featured Artists:

Ashton Phillips, Sadie Greyduck, Laura Steele, Dave Bush, Katie Murphy, Dylan Mack