Spartanburg Art Museum (SAM) presents Is Art Work?, an exhibition of contemporary art that brings attention to the unseen labors of love behind every work of art
The exhibition runs through June 4th, 2017.
Is Art Work? is a group exhibition featuring five artists whose work is meticulous, meditative, or laborious: artworks that require hard work. Each of the pieces in this exhibition required dozens, if not hundreds, of hours to produce. The central myth of the artist in our culture is that of the “starving artist”, whose labor is so undervalued that he or she cannot even afford to eat. Yet we all consume thing that artists produce – art – on a daily basis. The design of our clothing, the shape of our homes, the expressions and idioms we use to communicate, the caskets we will be buried in when we die: all are the work of artists of one kind or another. Why is a group that is at work in every sector of our society so marginalized?
Is Art Work? challenges viewers to consider the production of art as a repetitive, highly focused course of action, and calls attention to the often unseen labor behind every work of art.