“Empty Time”

Show runs February 6–March 14, 2010

Featuring:

Al Miner-dc

Adam Wallacavage-pa

Brady Robinson-fl

Martha Rich-ca

Tim Callaghan-oh

Aaron Smith-ca

Jenny Axner-dc

Kate MacDonnell-dc

Victoria F. Gaitán-dc

Dave Molesky-ca

Alex Schaefer-ca

Curator-Trevor Young

“Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence.”

-- Leo Stein, art critic and collector.

Empty time is the beauty of banality, the loveliness of languor. It's the line for the dressing room, and the moment after you put your toothbrush away. It's the bus, sans iPod or book; it's the highway overpass. Especially, it is the front porch. And it is ours every day for the taking, if only we could manage to grasp it. Instead -- and foolishly -- we eschew the burden of luxurious time.

Trevor Young's selections represent glimpses of our extravagant vacancy. From artists across America, he's chosen visual vignettes of what we experience in empty time, as well as the state of the unoccupied mind -- what we see and what we do when we are doing nothing at all. We gaze upon things that are quickly forgotten, like Kate MacDonnell's tiled bathroom floor, or Jenny Axner's mall parking lot. And the way we feel in the midst of empty time is shown through the young men presented by Al Miner, Victoria Gaitan and Aaron Smith, who prove that emptiness can be a sigh or a shrug or even just a lingering glance. It is a footnote to our day that we skim past, eyes darting instead to the boldfaced text, the bullet points, the ordered list.

That's also why empty time is a privilege for those who can afford it, like teenagers. They're a prominent part of this exhibition, epitomized by Adam Wallacavage's "Ozzy." It's the high school parking lot, the furtively-smoked cigarettes, the angsty violent music played by B- students who, in a few years, may minor in philosophy. Or in Martha Rich's "Guilty," whose subject might absentmindedly pick at her plate and her skin. But even though truly idle moments come less frequently as we grow older, we never grow out of empty time - we just displace it with material things. That's why, as Brady Robinson observed, you can purchase a tiny white suit for a toddler to wear once, and never again.

But empty time is an endangered species. Those moments we'd spend in quiet contemplation are now otherwise filled by the scrolling of iPhones and Blackberries, devices that occupy our time, but are no more meaningful than their alternative. Thus, Young's selections for "Empty Time" can be seen as relics of the past, when moments of quietude were unsullied by the constant clicking of personal technology -- technology that leaves us no less isolated than the empty time it competes with. For this reason, empty time is a luxury that we desperately crave.

And yet, when we're in the midst of it, this emptiness is a burden. That's why we'll do anything to fill it -- like clicking our omnipresent PDAs -- instead of simply savoring it as it passes. Many of those PDA-clickers have once uttered the platitude, "Live in the moment." If only they could realize that it's not just the moments of our choosing -- the eggs benedict brunches or morning jogs - but also the cold cups of coffee, the plastic bag in the tree, and the instant just before you realize that you can't find your goddamn keys, once again.

--Maura Judkis, Washington City Paper