gallery space...

Thursday there was an exhibit opening at mobilia gallery in cambridge, it was for Kevin Coates in conjunction with Baskets as Architecture. In one of the exhibition cases there was the work from Joe Wood, who had the show previous to this exhibit. There was also furniture in the window of the gallery, near the baskets, which worked with the baskets since most were made from wood and other natural materials. I work at mobilia, so i helped to set up the basket and furniture exhibit it was very difficult to do because of the conversation between the different pieces since it was from multiple artists rather than two or three. The basket wall was built into an organized chaos, where each basket had their own space on the wall but there were so many on the wall that there was a conversation between materials and color schemes that played out in order for the display to work. There were several other spaces in the gallery where the baskets were able to be displayed since not all were from the same color pallet and design sense. One of the spaces was based on color and materials, where the colors were pastels and school supplies such as pencils and tape measures and another space was created for several houses to be put upon astroturf, because they were created from playful materials such as tickets, paper scraps and were very colorful.

Kevin Coates exhibit was on the adjacent wall and spoke about order and cleanliness. This was because everything had a uniform case and setup, everything was measured and calculated to fit on the wall where there was a blocked out and painted area for the artists' work. Each one of his pieces (which were brooches) were set up on a piece of notebook/sketchbook paper where his research came out and spoke to the brooch, showing its origin and ideas. All were around the same size and had the same feel about them as if they were all marching out of his head and onto the walls. The two exhibits complimented each other because they had their own space while thinking about structure and order, whether it be through materials or through scale and color.