"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
