We stood on the sidewalk and watched the flames. The fire consumed the building, and thick smoke rose into the white afternoon-sky. “Look,” we said, tilting our heads back to see beyond. We saw the sun shining through the black cloud of ash like a one brilliant iris looming high above us. We blinked.
Death Fest began that same day. Hesitant to enter the congregation, a group of six or so crust punks took photos on their cameras from across the street.
No one moved until the trail of smoke disappeared—we saw it slither away as a snake might into the horizon. We never saw the damage done to the building; it was like fire never happened. On the ground, a black bird watched us.
Miranda Pfeiffer is an artist and animator. An avid gardener, she spends her free time tending to land in Baltimore, where she currently resides. Beekeeping is her newest passion. These environmental and urban interactions inspire her to make work.
Born and raised in New York City, Lucas King moved to Baltimore in 2007 to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art where he is a candidate for a BFA in General Fine Arts. Lucas works primarily in installation and dry media based art. He has exhibited in galleries in New York, Baltimore, Florida and Boston.
Max Guy (b. 1989 MacAllen, TX) grew up in New York City; he currently lives and works in Baltimore Maryland. In January of 2011 he co-founded Szechuan Best, an apartment-gallery presenting the work of contemporary artists from around the world. He spends a lot of time lost in thought.
The average American makes two trips to buy groceries each week, making supermarkets, mini-marts, and corner stores essential and incredibly influential parts of our everyday lives. All items are bought and sold at these stores using money. Money is earned through labor, and labor comes in countless different packages, much like our food. Through our labor we are inspired and we are exploited. We progress and we are repressed. We survive.
Art is created through labor, but unlike some of the more negative forms labor takes, art stimulates our minds, challenges our imaginations, and expands our vision for the world. Art is at the center of humanity’s continuous evolution, but it remains extraordinarily undervalued by mainstream American society, which is almost solely focused on the seemingly endless cycle of labor and consumption. This limited view of life is slowly eliminating our ability to imagine, dream, and think freely.
Through C A R T, Current Gallery is positing that art is not optional, but essential. It affects all of us internally, whether we are aware of it or not, and it should therefore be considered as fundamental to our daily lives as the products we purchase at grocery stores every week. Therefore, Current Space will be transformed into a fully functional mini-supermarket, complete with aisles, window displays, shopping baskets, and cash registers in an attempt to explore the exchange of artists’ labor for profit in a familiar, everyday setting
Current Space is an artist-run gallery, studio, and a headquarters for cultural production, nourishing an ongoing dialogue between artists, activists, performers, designers, curators, and thinkers. Operating since November 2004, we are committed to showcasing, developing, and broadening the reach of artists locally and internationally.
