Various Small Fires is pleased to present new work by Robert Barry, Helen Mirra, and Matt Sheridan Smith. A quiet conversation among measured gestures, this exhibition considers the unsteady conditions of material form and the possibility for presence in absence.
A pioneer of conceptualism and minimalism, Robert Barry’s practice has long explored the spaces in between. Much of his work cannot be seen or heard, but instead surrounds its viewer, suggesting a transmission from, as he specified in his Inert Gas works, “measured volume to indefinite expansion.” Evoking presence in the immaterial––from an electromagnetic wave, to atmospheric shifts, to a line of text––and our own trust therein, Barry urges our curiosity beyond what can be touched. For Tehachapi, Barry has conceived a new word list in reflective silver vinyl, which will climb two stories inside the gallery’s atrium. Comprising half-inverted text, subject to changing conditions of light and the viewer’s position in space, Barry’s word list challenges its own legibility, while reminding us of real and imagined possibilities beyond the work’s visual presence.
Until several years ago, Helen Mirra’s sculptural, performative, and text-based practice comprised discrete works made from various materials. She has since undertaken a strategy of working that is embedded in walking, and in which she links one exhibition to the next. Through each excursion new works are produced, and the presentation of those works prompts further excursions. Mirra elaborates on this strategy with a single new work made for Tehachapi, presented as a modest taxonomy of white crustose tree lichens, each a sort of found miniature white monochromatic painting. Once the work is sold––and each time it is moved––Mirra will travel to the geographical region of its new home. There she will walk and collect new lichen specimens, generating a cycle of walking and accumulation.
