Prospects
Work by Julietta Cheung curated by Danny Floyd for Ballroom Projects April 2 - 23, 2016
In a recent conversation about the planning of the exhibition, Julietta mentioned that she became very emotional watching dancers move oddly and for long durations at a couple of performances she saw. It wasn’t any romanticism that moved her to tears. She wondered why she is affected so differently by objects and images that seem to say the same things.
Julietta’s visual works comprise a text and derives its content from already existing sources and makes something altogether new. She mediates her observations of the objects and built spaces around them into syntactical arrangements of sculptures to create fiction. It isn’t a fictional narrative but in a qualitative feeling, a fictional sense translating and transcribing possibilities that already exist in our futures.
In her recent essay, “Minoritarian Enunciation and Global Product Culture” published by Kenning Editions, Julietta writes that our completely designed everyday experience is full of “forms and systems [that] follow rules, are conjugated, make up clichés, refer to a network of other things….” Her objects however speak more in the style of Jane Austen’s characters in one of her novels. In other words, focusing on aesthetic utility belies the coldness the actual utility her work fictionalizes. Maybe it isn’t something to cry over, but there is a subversive sweetness to it.
It is a pleasure to invite Julietta Cheung back to Ballroom Projects as a celebration of our third anniversary. Around this time in 2013, Julietta participated in the One Word salon, our first program as an artist-run space, alongside Jais Gossman, JM Demaree, and Courtney Mackedanz. Cheers to Julietta and to three years of Ballroom Projects!
