Summer of Possibilities - Bode Projects 2022
Alteronce Gumby sat down with artist David Reed, and in exchanged thoughts on the academic side of the art world and the development of Abstraction, narratives & stories about Reed’s interaction with Willem de Kooning during a visit he made to The New York Studio School in the late ’60s. Reed describes how during his visit with the composer Morton Feldman, the then Dean at the school, de Kooning could only say that not knowing what they were meant to do was the cause of that break. The state of the world and their community during the late ’40s shook artists then, leaving them to wander the streets of New York City one summer, in August to be exact, questioning what exactly they were meant to do. Read more about the exhibition on Bode Projects’ website.
Summer of Possibilities is an homage to that one summer in August when artists did not know.
It combines emerging and established artists who represent the work of art-making and the importance of those historical breaks that exist in their practices. But it is also a statement about the process of art-making now.
Summer of Possibilities (2022), photos courtesy of Bode Projects
In art, one cannot forecast what the future will look like. We can make predictions based on technological trends, the social and political climate, and cultural shifts that permeate the collective subconscious. However, how anything will manifest can only be understood from the perspective of history. The why and how the process of art-making contains tangible breaks can only be described through what art-making is, which is ultimately the production of possibilities in the dedication to making art.
