Patient: Language is an Arrangement
A collaborative installation by Colleen Louise Barry, Yudo Kurita, and Nicholas Nyland
Presented at DaDaDa Gallery, Seattle
Patient: A Group Art Exhibition Aug 1-17, 2019
Language is an Arrangement takes its title from one line of the poem composed by Colleen Louise Barry especially for this project. This line is an entry point into the way the three artists have approached their collaboration and their materials. Language is indeed a literal arrangement of words in a particular order. However, language is also a social arrangement, an agreement to a more or less shared vocabulary used to form intelligible meaning and imagery. In a similar way, each artist has brought to the table specific constituent parts - a poem, photographs, camellia branches and cedar logs - that act through actual and metaphorical arrangement. At once playful forms can also be read in terms of the inherent conflicts that the seemingly staid art of flower arranging conceals behind a highly stylized presentation of “nature”.
Flower arranging may indeed be an ideal way to approach our complicated relationship to the natural world. It can be seen as a corollary to our effect on the environment - the unintended byproduct of a desire to perfect and improve our existence. The codified arrangement of seasons shifting beneath our feet, where many flora - as so many populations on earth - are facing displacement and uncertain futures. Artificial materials threaten to overwhelm our shores. Despite this, or maybe because of this, the world continues to offer up meaning and moments of beauty from the detritus.
A risograph printed broadside designed by Colleen Louise Barry and printed by Cold Cube Press accompanies the exhibition.