August 2 – 25,
2013

Opening reception Friday, 2 August 2013, from 6 – 11 pm

Marginal Utility is pleased to present ‘get it while it’s cheap #3’, a summer group show that features new projects by Brian Artigue, Alexis Kandra, Scott Schultheis, C.J. Stahl & Ashley Wick.

Brought together by their love of collective introspection and perfectly formed meats, The Meatball Boys (Brian Artigue, Scott Schultheis & C.J. Stahl) concern themselves with the structures of identity and practice. Often using dark and humorous visual tones, The Meatball Boys like to believe that it is still necessary to make sweeping critical gestures and eat sandwiches.

Alexis Kandra’s two paintings in the exhibition are inspired by natural history dioramas. Dioramas are models designed to take a part of a distant wild ecosystem, freeze it in time, and display it through dramatic theater to an audience. Museum wildlife dioramas in America were designed to gain popular support for the protection of ecosystems, when it became clear they would be completely destroyed through unchecked westward expansion. These paintings are dioramas of a quiet, internal, psychological state. The exaggerated color, stage lighting, and unlikely interactions between species indicate that this is a different world. The animals are like collaged or placed elements in a model.

Ashley Wick’s ‘Nature is Natural’ focuses on the inability of communication to visualize the behavioral tendencies in human nature, and the inadequacies of written and spoken language. By investigating language through repetition, Wick finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness and humor tht echoes our own vulnerabilities. Wick’s video installation work appears as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, and the past and present fuse.

And, special thanks to Zorawar Sidhu for the poached poster image.