Kristin Bauer has been a busy woman for the past month. Immediately after de-installing Mixed Messages, a joint show of her and husband Emmett Potter's latest artwork, she began preparing the same space at Modified Arts for The Sky Is Falling: A Group Exhibition about the Gravity of Things.
Though Bauer has shown her own artwork at Modified before (the gallery hosted her first solo show downtown in 2004), this is her first time curating there, she says.
See Also: - Photographer Logan Bellew Explores Age and Innocence in "Angels v.2" at Eye Lounge - Phoenix Artist Lara Plecas Gives a Fond Farewell in Her Last Exhibition at Eye Lounge
The Sky Is Falling ties together many of the artistic relationships Bauer has had throughout her career; she has worked with all 12 of the participating artists in different capacities prior to this show. She says she began by pulling themes from a few works, and then building bigger connections off of those themes.
All of the artist have worked in Phoenix before (all but 3 still so), and their artwork spans a wide array of media, including digital and analog photography, encaustic and mixed media paintings, sculptural works and works on paper.
"The work in this exhibition explores the presence and the feeling of abstract and intangible forms of gravity," according Bauer. Some of the pieces, like Logan Bellew's Untitled - Cyprus (Fire) (2011), were created in environments of political or economic strife, while others deal with more personal forms of heaviness.
But many of the artists are more tongue-in-check. Bauer says this sense of humor in the face of weighty subject matter is a big part of the exhibition as well, "challenging our perception of what we allow to 'hold weight'."
The Sky Is Falling opens this Friday, April 19th at Modified Arts, which will be open from 6 - 9 p.m.. The show runs through May 11th, so if you can't make it to the opening, make sure to stop by during next month's First Friday.
For more a full list of participating artists and more info about the exhibition, check out the Modified webpage or the Facebook event page.
