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Art in the Style of Radical
New work by SPACE 1026
July 27 - Aug 27, 2006
For the past ten years Space 1026 has largely defined the underground Philadelphia art scene as a central location for art exhibits and a creative resource for street and fine art, small press, screen printing, and multiples. One Space 1026 member describes the group as "a common excitement for making - not for some outside world of aficionados, but for our own kind. An excitement in common." The exhibit "Art in the Style of Radical" will bring members together to share that excitement with Toronto. The show will demonstrate how the studio maintains its creative and stylistic independence in the face of a culture industry that constantly attempts to appropriate the community's style and sell it back to them as a diluted form of "cool consumerism". The struggle of maintaining the core inspirations of Space 1026 is something the members have been working to defend since the very beginnings.
What is Space 1026?
It's a tough question, but here are three answers:
Space 1026 has been a 7 year experiment. It has developed from a handful of founders to dozens of co-conspirators. Together we are becoming Space 1026.
Space 1026 is a common excitement for making, producing and creating, not for some outside world of aficionados, but for each other, for our own kind.
Space 1026 is two floors of a building at 11th and Arch. That's in Philadelphia. It is a network of dozens of artists who've had studios at the Space, past and present. It is dozens of artists who've had shows at the Space over the last 7 years. It is dozens of artists who come to our events, and participate in our community.
Space 1026 is a community - a creative community - not an institution.
Or you could try and pull some postmodern shit and say Space 1026 does not exist; but then you'd have to do some explaining to the mice that eat our leftovers every night.
The Art of Space 1026
Space 1026 is not a collaboration! Yes it is! No its not! Yes it is! Exactly.
Walter Benjamin wrote about the angel of history but he probably had us in mind: "Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."
That pile of debris; that's our Space.
But it works. Sometimes.
A unity to our disunity?
A consistency to our inconsistency?
Or is it just the appearance of a plan when really there is only the faith, in ourselves and in each other, that somebody will buy more toilet paper? (If you can't count on your friends to wipe your ass, then what good are they, really?)
Press inquiries:
contact@magic-pony.com
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2006