Monomania

Bill Adams, Huma Bhabha, Katherine Bradford, Shaun Ellison, Jason Fox, Sky Glabush, Pam Glick, Chris Hammerlein, Andy Heckboyd, Jordan Kasey, Cristina Lama, Rhys Lee, Marcio Matos, Jenna Ransom, Emil Robinson, Leigh Ruple, Paige Turner-Uribe, Mathew Wong

Curated by Shaun Ellison and Paul Whiting

“Everywhere and in everything I found a disorder that shocked me. His colour-box could hardly contain all those tubes, crowded together and never closed. In spite of all this disorder, this mess, something shone out of his canvases, and out of his talk, too. […] He possessed the greatest tenderness, or rather… altruism.” - Paul Gaugin, on Vincent van Gogh

The works on paper and sculptures brought together in Monomania suggest forms of focused passion. Stripped of an overly intellectual, academic veneer, these spontaneous creative acts are both vulnerable and powerful. Their directness and impulsive nature may be taken to relate to the origins of “Monomania,” a nineteenth-century term used as a clinical description of psychiatric subjects who obsessed over one particular area (mono-), with excitement so strong as to become a frenzy (-mania). Here, works on paper are chosen especially because of their immediacy and the accessibility they offer. Even when intended as preparation for work in another medium, they are read in “Monomania” as works unto themselves.