BROOKLYN, N.Y.- The Smack Mellon Gallery presents I Can't Quiet Place It, curated by Elizabeth M. Grady and on view through July 16, 2006. Artists: Avantika Bawa, Ofri Cnaani, Graciela Fuentes, Richard Garrison, Grady Gerbracht, Monika Goetz, Lynne Harlow, Vibeke Jensen, Tom Kotik, Fawn Krieger, Amanda C. Mathis, Megan Michalak, Steven Millar, Jung Sun Oh, Roy Stanfield, Jen Urso, Robert Walden

Using unusual approaches to navigating spaces and occupying places, the seventeen emerging artists in I can’t quite place it… radically alter their environments, transforming them in an effort to subvert structures both architectural and social. Their widely varied approaches to the subjective perception of a place and its impact on the individual will include video, sculpture, drawing, and ten new site-specific installations.

Practicing an intuitive rearrangement of the visual information encountered in the course of an average day, the artists toy with the structures of power and human interaction encoded in space, borrowing from the architecture of Smack Mellon's new site, as well as the very energy of the gallery itself in the form of light, sound, and time. They lead us along from image to idea, following a trajectory of free-associations, and creating a discontinuous mosaic of temporal perception in contrast to the more commonplace linear narratives associated with Western culture.

Each of the artists in this show responds to the specific architectural structures and histories of the sites in which they install their work. Experience comes in flashes and streaks, seams and ruptures rather than an unbroken line. They believe that it makes more sense to record experience abstractly than to make of it something explicit and delimited. Open-ended meanings are preferable to fixed and closed ones, allowing the opportunity for varied responses and spontaneous reactions. In this way these artists encourage the viewer to share in their intuitive approaches.

Although individually these artists may or may not view their work as political, their creation of a liminal space, an unfamiliar realm where some of the rules and restrictions of everyday life are relaxed and replaced by different norms of behavior provides a model for intellectual freedom. Perceiving the urban environment on their own terms rather than those dictated by the structures and practices of society is a way of undermining the constraints and oppression associated with institutions, and established systems of power .

In the delicate and cerebral architectural interventions of Avantika Bawa cardboard and Styrofoam are used in the service of breaking down the barriers between sculpture and drawing, and treading the line between wholeness and fragmentation, containment and dispersal. Drawing on the legacy of Minimalism, her work responds to its context, inviting viewers to experience it as they move through it, over time.

In Patrol (2003/06), Ofri Cnaani projects video footage of menacing footfalls overhead, creating an uncanny sense of physical dislocation which raises our awareness of the psychological qualities inherent in the construction of space, and the social impact of the exercise of authority. The projection surface divides us from direct interaction with the walkers, creating a dynamic tension between their freedom of movement and our compromised viewing position, which mirrors our subjection to often invisible structures of power.

Occupying the liminal space of passage that occurs in the airspace above cities, Graciela Fuentes’ video installation Landing (2004/06) places us in an airplane above Mexico City. The video loop cuts back and forth between clips of approach and takeoff, never permitting arrival or departure. Leaving us in limbo, she tantalizingly references the importance, yet ultimate impossibility, of rootedness to place by projecting the video onto soil.

Richard Garrison navigates suburban sprawl, with its winding roads, vast parking lots, and “big box” stores like Wal-Mart, recording the experience in drawings and installations. By focusing on the experiential phenomena of those sites like color and light, rather than their intended use and function, he questions their impact on the individual psyche, and highlights the choices available as we avoid, move through, and occupy them in the course of our weekly routines.