Multiple Sensibilities

In contemporary culture what exactly does “art for art’s sake” mean? How many artists working in the contemporary art world are actually making art for art’s sake? Is it possible to divorce art from any utilitarian, didactic, or moral function anymore? Doesn’t all art serve a function? Why am i asking all of these question? Common Sense, Sheila Pepe and Elizabeth Dunbar’s current testsite collaboration features a text which slings that 19th century slogan out into the world. It is contrasted with a “newly revived can-do attitude an ushering in of a new “era of practicality”…” Hmmm, okay then. Ignore the text, Pepe’s work holds its own. Quirky webs of crocheted yarn hang from the walls and ceiling in the living space, their olive green hues forming webs that stretch across the room and around the coffee table. In the dining room burnt orange yarn again reaches across the room, its tendrils hanging down off of the lattice begging to be tugged and unraveled.

This suggested, and eventually actual, unraveling is critical to Pepe’s work. Throughout the duration of the exhibition visitors will be encouraged to dismantle the latticework and transform it into practical items. In doing so the creation of another kind of nexus will ideally take place; that of friendship and community. Pepe’s work certainly embodies the communal, practical, and interactive spirit it lays claim to but it also suggests something else; the presence of, and allowance for, multiple subjectivities. Some may see Pepe’s project as purely beautiful objects, others may crochet mittens out of its threads, and still others may read in the work rich philosophical and feminist ideas. The power of the work is that it is consciously all of those things, occupying multiple territories and allowing others to inhabit them too. This is perhaps the most interesting web the work creates, and is a far cry from the us and them rhetoric suggested by a phrase like art for arts sake. Whatever your sensibility may be, take a trip over to testsite and have a look, or, if the threat of global warming hasn’t terrified you, crochet yourself a nice winter hat. You’ll feel at home either way.