Onslaught Undone

Scale is not real; space is relative. Comparative value is continuously engaged; singularity is impossible within the human gaze. Onslaught Undone is an investigation of spacial and experiential relativity in direct contrast to the accumulated visual, physical and aural experiences thrown at us in the digital age. “Switch off” is the frequent call to action; but “off” seems almost dead. We all want to be “switched on” and “tuned in”, a symptom of the over-stimulated, over-manipulated, too-much-information era. Through a virtually continuous conversation, artists Nemo Nonnenmacher and Stacie McCormick question the nature of contemporary experience, where disconnect becomes the unavoidable result of constant connectedness, translated into a collaboration of large-scale sculpture and gestural paintings. The two artists are riveted by the “real” and demonstrate a transformation of scale, mediating sensory input to counteract the speed of networks, creating a profound moment where the experience of the work itself constitutes an interpretation of the world.

In his work, Nonnenmacher plays on the relationship of the infinite inside expansion as equal to the outer expansiveness of space. By presenting an enormous sculpture that breaks through the boundaries of the gallery, he questions our understanding of geometric and rational space, whilst McCormick’s large-scale paintings negotiate expanding volumes on a flat plane. For her, the “unmeasurable” is the impossibility of awareness of our existence in the present, as we can only observe our past or evidence of having been. Onslaught Undone sets out to practice reduction. By distilling their practices, Nonnenmacher and McCormick seek to allow the viewer to roam. The resulting smoothness becomes a fluid platform where we are encouraged to relinquish our chronic and fruitless urge to assess and “figure out”, symptomatic of our time. As Nonnenmacher explains, “undoing is not eradication, it is reconfiguration, catalysing to another space or object”. McCormick similarly observes that her process is “an undoing, a release of accumulation rather than destruction”.
At the core of this collaboration, the artists posit the impossibility of immediate awareness and a faith in the transformative aspect of experience. It is a demonstration of how to reconfigure an onslaught through finding a single note to hold onto, a compass to guide through the noise. As understanding is elusive and momentum insistent and unyielding, this exhibition puts a stick in the wheels and proposes a transitory stopping point. Onslaught Undone inevitably creates a third space, a liminal space to meditate and release and thus transform.