Whitney Lynn: Rummage
June 6 – June 29, 2015
Opening Reception: June 6, 7-9 pm
Whitney Lynn presents Rummage, a series of performative installations at Open Source Gallery.
Garage sales have a long history, tracing back to the early 1800s, when shipyards would sell off unclaimed cargo–called “rommage”–at discounted rates. Eventually moving from the docks into private yards and community spaces, the modern garage sale exploded as both a tradition and phenomenon in the 1950s with the flood of consumer goods entering the market. Today rummage sales are a staple of summer and many shoppers are driven by “the find,” combing through others’ castoffs in an effort to discover a coveted treasure.
Throughout the month of June, each week of Rummage will feature a rotating artist’s interpretation of a garage sale. Lynn has invited an array of New York-based artists with conceptually-oriented practices to participate, including Wong Kit Yi, Kai Vierstra, SeoKyeong Lee Yoon, Christine Wong Yap, and Lauren Frances Adams. Welcoming each collaborator to freely interpret the premise, responses variously examine themes of sales, investment, value, marketplace, unwanted materials, and community engagement. Installations will range from collections of transformed toys to participatory artworks.
Rummage is an extension of Lynn’s previous performance-based projects, exploring aspects of vernacular cultures and casting others to investigate the messy intersections of art and life. She is interested in the places where boundaries, environments, and actions collide. Playing with performance and public space, Rummage will create a series of participatory experiences that highlight the history inherent within commonplace objects and often overlooked traditions.
Whitney Lynn implements a variety of media–including sculpture, performance, video, and drawing–to question ideas of boundaries and containment, history and restaging, context, and form. Lynn received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently a member of the Stanford University faculty.
Schedule:
June 6, 7-9pm: Wong Kit Yi, Forbidden Flickers/no-no films
June 11-13, 2-7pm: Kai Vierstra, Airavata’s Honesty Boxed Bazaar
June 18-20, 2-7pm: SeoKyeong Lee Yoon, Used Toys for Sale
June 25-26, 3-8pm and June 27, 1-6pm: Christine Wong Yap and Lauren Frances Adams, a handle, a stem, a hook, a ring, a loop
Rummage | Press Release | Wong Kit Yi | Kai Vierstra | SeoKyeong Lee Yoon | Christine Wong Yap and Lauren Frances Adams
