Each year Chicago Sculpture International dedicates a theme to its endeavors. This year the theme, Re-Imagining Connection, has a home in 3D4D’s first group exhibition. Curators, Bryan Northup and Pia Cruzalegui, share their vision of this moto:
“If faced with “re-imagining” anything, we must admit the probability that whatever came before is broken, beyond repair, or does not fit anymore.
At the very least, it needs improving.
When it is basic human connection that is forced to evolve in this alien time, how do we experience feeling human togetherness, nevermind a hug, in a time where, at closest, we are always six feet apart?
Experiencing these artworks together, works that could not have held as much meaning before our “normal” was broken, is a way to connect to the now. We are almost in the aftermath of a pandemic, at the “barely beginning” of racial reckoning, and our overburdened planet is quickly changing. We are in a moment in the midst of so much opportunity, yet also so much unknowing. Without connection, which way is forward?
To re-imagine is to share how we make it through, how we pick up the scraps of what is left and are forced to make something in a different way, while trying to apply some sense of order from what we know and stitch together a new way of being.”
- Bryan Northup
“I have sat down to ponder on these two words: “re-imagining connections”.
What does it really mean? I have unintentionally focused on the word “connection”?
In today’s world, or perhaps always, the word connection is sometimes ubiquitous, taken for granted, overused and fleeting. People may count how many connections they have on social media, or perhaps say ‘it’s all about how well-connected you are.’
Does any of this really matter?
In my observation, the word ‘connection’ seems diluted in publications and advertising, as the new punchy keyword of the moment.
What really matters is how we connect to the world around us, to our fellow humans, to our histories and the relationships we build with them.
In the end, connection is really about the human interaction we have within and with others. Thus “Re-Imagining Connection”, prompts us to rethink and re-interpret the relationships we have with the world around us, our relationships with the past and present.
The artists we selected for the upcoming exhibition showcase works expressing the sensibilities of our inherent human nature and our desire to connect.“
- Pia Cruzalegui