Third Floor Site 3 | Opening Reception April 10 @ 7-10 p.m. Sensing Place brings together four former Torpedo Factory Art Center artists-in-residence whose practices consider place not as a fixed location, but as something remembered, recorded, felt, and activated. Between the physical action of investigating a place and the re-creation of someplace treasured elsewhere, these artists create work that speaks to how the treasured places we visit in our lives and memories can traverse distances both physically and metaphorically. Overall, these artists push for a noticing of our surroundings, at times formal, at times spiritual, allowing viewers to notice the air between sculpted forms, and view place as a site of history, emotion, and potential reimagination. Material exploration and community-oriented gestures further support these artists’ practices as they respond to places of personal importance – sometimes even responding to Torpedo Factory Art Center itself. Sookkyung Park engages the quiet physicality of paper, air, and gravity, using repetition and materiality to reveal how light forms can define and hold space. Comprised of smaller forms building together, the works show evidence of hands, slowly folding and connecting pieces of paper. Upon viewing the work, the artist can sense potential movement, say if a breeze were to blow, and possibly feel the artist’s presence in the space as well. Jill McCarthy Stauffer reconstructs environments through a variety of materials including light and projection. Using technology to imperfectly reflect aweing moments of perception, Stauffer weaves together natural memory, religious symbolism, and personal ties to landscape. Their works become tech-mediated reconstructions of experience, asking how human forms of representation shape our sense of place. Micah Meyers approaches their practice through acts of cleaning, mapping, and close observation, treating care and maintenance as artistic gestures that reveal how we move through and subconsciously come to understand our surroundings. As they work, they document and contribute to the embedded signs of past human presence in a space. They often using everyday household or construction materials in their work. Adele 이슬 Kenworthy’s practice centers community and her heritage beyond a fixed place, often presenting personal and cultural rituals as an opportunity to be human together while ensuring these rituals live on beyond a single occurrence, through collective memory. Her practice relies on both research and personal experience, and she utilizes embodied gestures of care as means of preserving non-dominant histories. Moving between the tangible and the ephemeral, the exhibition suggests that place is not static or singular, but experienced and built together through material attention, daily habits, technological mediation, and community. Their work reflects that it is not only where we are, but how we discern meaning from the places we pass...
