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"The Army That You Have" 

Curated by Marian April Glebes at Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD

September 17 - October 23, 2016

Opening Reception: Saturday September 17, 2016, 7-10pm

Additional Performances and Closing Event October 23, 2016

 

THE ARMY THAT YOU HAVE

 

“Q: Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? And why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?”

 

“A: It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have - not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up …”

 

- Donald Rumsfeld, December 2004

 

These realistic fantasies presented in "The Army That You Have" assert that we can, as a society at large, rethink and critique disciplinary boundaries of making, process, and product, and posit the hope for a more careful world. They use the most available and ubiquitous material at hand and underfoot: dirt. Collaborations with dirt through force, suggested force, and passivism - ridiculous, pluralistic, topical, explosive, meditative, and absurd - occupy suggested futures and self aware presents. Always maintaining an awareness of futility, this work presents making as an act of creative and personal survival. These artists use dirt as a literal and metaphorical pathway to utopian reconstruction of our received social values and our projected existence, using the material underneath our literal and metaphorical feet as a mechanism to suggest and occupy a greater future and a more responsible now.

ARTISTS:

T+E+A+M (Thom Moran, Ellie Abrons, Adam Fure, Meredith Miller) Ann Arbor, MI

Josh Copus, Asheville, NC

Jaimes Mayhew, Baltimore, MD

Brian Stansbury, Baltimore, MD

Bart O'Reilly, Baltimore, MD

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