This gallery, informally referred to as ‘under the stairs’, is an interstitial space – formed by the galleries that surround it. It is a negative of a positive, the leftover from a functional form. It lies in-between, forming the way one considers what lies on the other side of the concrete divide, what is revealed and what is hidden. As the risers and runners of multiple staircases surround the viewer, form becomes rhythmic, linear texture, closing in underfoot and overhead. In this space one is simultaneously astonished, disoriented, and mystified. While not originally conceived as an exhibition space, through imaginative thinking it became so.
As a marginal space it is not confined by traditional boundaries or conceptions. This notion of working the margin is akin to the creative strategies taught at New Paltz. Students are expected to engage the traditions of jewelry and hollowware, working within the field’s “architecture”, but not to mimic it; in dialogue through making they question function, value, and relevance to our somatic, conceptual and incorporeal experience. We look backward and forward at the same time, challenging and promoting the practice of making.
Provoked by the space itself, we ask the viewer to consider what it means to be ‘under the stairs’. In a domestic setting it is a space to keep things that are only used occasionally, or perhaps forgotten. It is a psychic space, the space of the Odradek, a space where fear of the unknown is manifested. Within this space discoveries are made, surprises can be found, and occasionally we lose even ourselves.