DEEP play

 Imaginary realms and comfort objects

 

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present DEEP play, an exhibition of new work by Daria Dorosh

on view from October 4 - 28, 2012.  

 

In DEEP play, her 20th one-person exhibition, Daria Dorosh revisits the magical landscape of childhood, and takes us back to the beginning - to touch, to play, to imagine.  

 

The sixteen textile sculptures are described as comfort objects, or toys for grown-ups. Each one is installed on its own shelf and can be picked up by gallery visitors. They are accompanied by 16 digital prints that situate the sculpture in 19th century illustrations to contrast the romantic dreamscapes of the past with our own. Each digital print is in a frame made for it and is a unique work.

 

The portable sculpture, inspired by the cell phone, seeks to colonize the ecosystem of fashion and the body. The artist asks, “Can the body become a site for art, shared with fashion and technology? Is it significant that text, textile, and technology all converge in the Latin root texere, ‘to weave’? And if play is a code for change in a technological world, can play lead us to new patterns in art?”

 

DEEP play explores the connection between play, story, textile, and site, as framed by digital culture.

 

Daria Dorosh, a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, integrates traditional art with new media, fashion, and technology. In 2011 she received ArtTable’s 30th Anniversary Artist Honors Award for work that goes beyond studio practice, and her 2011 interview by Paddy Johnson Concerns from The Second Economy: Daria Dorosh on the Baby Boomer’s Relationship to Technology and Art is posted on the Art Fag City blog. She completed her PhD thesis, Patterning: the Informatics of Art and Fashion at SMARTlab, UK, in 2007. Fashion is a source of social, historic, and personal information, which she explores through her company, Fashion Lab in Process. Her exhibitions, such as Plays Well with Others (2004) and The Changing Room (2007) were collaborative multimedia installations with guest participants from diverse fields.

 

The prints are from several 19th c. sources: The Universe: or, the Infinitely Great and the Infinitely Little, by F.A. Pouchet, M.D.; engraved biblical illustrations by Gustave Dore; paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The title of the show is inspired by Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Third Industrial Revolution.

 

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