Missing Target

Atticus Bergman, Craig Kalpakijan, Irina Jasnowski Pascual, Jan Kiefer, Jessica Wilson, Micaela Carolan, Mira Putnam, Pedro Wirz, Tracy Molis, Thomas Laprade, Elliott Jamal Robbins

“Missing Target” explores the ruin as a cultural referent, bringing together a group of artworks engaging with themes of obsolescence as found across a span of circumstances from the everyday, digital and geopolitical realms. In employing such ruinous elements, the system is not only placed into question, but transported into the void of madness. And—in this moment of absurdity—a refreshing clarity comes to offer a clearer vision of the system itself. The ruined and obsolete, reframed as essential in these artworks, thus break past their proscribed meanings and act as a grounding chaotic force into which the spectator is drawn.

While the spectator is asked to look closer, they may realize something even more disorienting. The target in question is absent; the exhibition’s denial of this destination explores realms of possibility existing outside of any one narrative purpose. The word itself, target, evokes some goal in violent sport: darts, archery, even hunting—what does it mean to “miss” in these perilous games? The artworks in this show are constantly searching through redaction, erasure, appropriation, a reconfiguration of obsolescence, and asserting absence-as-presence.