8 x 2: Curators Pick Artists

by Jenny Assef

pARTs Photographic Arts recently unveiled its new street-level gallery and new name—Minnesota Center for Photography—with another unveiling: the current show pulls back the curtain to reveal the curator’s invisible hand.

Or sixteen hands, rather, as the exhibit’s title, 8 x 2, suggests. Show organizer Mark Wojahn chose eight local curators, all women, and set them loose to choose two artists each. “This show emphasizes that curating is itself an art form, an artistic act,” Wojahn says. “Curators play an important conceptual role in forming the audience’s experience of art.”

Wojahn’s list of curators includes heavy hitters who have helped shaped the twin cities art world from behind the scenes. 8 x 2 allows us a peek at what they do. Ungloved, the curatorial process looks like a series of choices, some of them personal, some of them practical, all of them approached with the spirit of play.
Curator Jennifer Jenkins chose Minneapolis artist Xavier Tavera, whose brand of realism is fresh and confronting. His photographs are simultaneously on display at Franklin ArtWorks on East Franklin, where his solo show La Calle is underway. Jenkins’ other choice, Neil Matthieson, brings us video installations depicting seed migrations with a dreamlike surreality. Together, Tavera and Matthieson’s works feel like either end of a set of parentheses cupping an emerging regional sensibility.

Clea Felien of the Tinke Gallery chose Dafna Shalom, whose photographs of her mother’s dirty dishes are weighted with sadness, and Bernadette Tomko, whose toy-centered compositions are cute and haunting all at once.

Christi Atkinson, long-time Curator/Program Director at No Name Exhibition @ The Soap Factory, chose what is perhaps the show’s most intriguing work. Yoshua Okon’s series “Parking Lotus” features oversized photographs of security guards in full uniform, sitting in the lotus position, seeking tranquility. In this series, Okon, originally of Mexico City, strikes a perfectly ambivalent chord; As Atkinson points out in her notes accompanying the series, we know someone is being made fun of, but we don’t know if it’s the security guards or us.

Whether or not you would have chosen differently, 8 x 2 is worth seeing.
The show runs through Jan. 19 at the Minnesota Center for Photography (formerly pARTs), 711 W. Lake St. Hours: Tue. – Sun 12-5 p.m. Open til 8 p.m. on Thu. 612-824-5500.