Organizing an open call exhibition is quite unlike a typical group exhibition. Instead of starting on a path of inquiry and burrowing down into artists, art works, reaching out to avenues of thoughts; with an open call it is the opposite flow, finding a way through the material that reaches out to you. In this type of setting I always follow two paths. First I begin looking to definitions from Webster's New International Dictionary, second edition unabridged, of 1949. In this situation, I was taken by the second definition offered for margin: "A condition approximately marking the limit at which something will remain or continue to be or act; a limit." Grounding myself on this Margins not as location but condition set the course to begin the second path. Simply advancing five to ten times through all the images and video clips--not stopping to check names or statements--for traces, details, hints that haunt. Works that were at a limit where they could continue to be or act. Things readily themselves, or aware on their conditions. Then looking for friends or neighbors to enrich these images and gestures. Ways to support what feels right about the many distinct individual traces. Then the supporting words are brought in to bear. Looking for a group of equals.
In this, the number of works selected per artist does not imply a hierarchy. Someone with multiple works isn't necessarily better than someone represented by only one work. Think of the conversations that matter in your own day-to day: it is how you speak and build off each other's thoughts that resonates. Not the number of words. Hopefully I have offered some good conversations for the works generously submitted by all the artists. Hopefully they begin to comment productively on each other's limits or conditions. Sharing and extending rather than retorting; allowing each to remain and continue to be or act.
If there are any downsides in this process for me, the first is trying to find intelligent resonances and emotive groupings between works without spending time in the presence of the actual material facts of the selected art. So many surfaces, cuts, scales, and lines that intrigue in reproductions. The second downside is the requirement to select a juror's prize, second prize, and honorable mention from out of the group. I've never thought any art work worth attention as a competitive gesture. More a generous one--offering an image or extending an attentiveness to others. IN making art we risk a statement to a time, a place, a situation. In this, the idea of privileging a select few over the grouping feels wrong, counterintuitive. Particularly today. It is the constellation of the gathered margins and my effort that has merit or lack thereof, and should be judged. All the art works have extended themselves in equanimity up to their limits.