Manifest: Armed

Manifest: Armed is the first in a series of exhibitions focusing on the reaction of artists to technological trends. Armed features four artists—Sarah Frost, Julian Oliver, and the collective SmithBeatty (artists Colin Beatty and Craig Smith)—whose work deals with issues surrounding American gun culture.

The Manifest series investigates art, technology, and the role of exhibition spaces. Sarah Frost’s installation, Arsenal, focuses on a community of boys who self-publish instructional YouTube videos for making paper guns. Julian Oliver’s Transparency Grenade sits waiting to “detonate” in the very real and unseen space of wireless information. A collaborative work and performance by Craig Smith and Colin Beatty, FireSale©TM, involves the purchase, disassembly, distribution and reassembly of a 9mm caliber firearm.

Opening Reception:  Thursday August 9th from 6-8 pm in the Corcoran College of Art + Design's Gallery 31

Smith and Beatty will “perform” their work Thursday, August 30 at 6 p.m.; a panel involving Armed artists Smith, Beatty, and Frost will follow at 7:30 p.m. For more information about this free evening, please visit http://getinvolved.corcoran.org/firesale.

A MESSAGE FROM CORCORAN DIRECTOR FRED BOLLERER

The Manifest series is meant to contribute toward a discussion of the impact of technology on our lives and institutions, The name suggests that by manifesting ideas through objects or exhibitions, artists and curators are themselves engaged in a technological process.  As we know, these processes are multifaceted and sometimes have repercussions beyond what we could expect. With that in mind, we must acknowledge with profound sorrow the coincidence of this first Manifest exhibition with the recent catastrophe in Aurora, Colorado. To that end, the Corcoran will donate a percentage of admission proceeds for the month of August to the Community First Foundation’s Aurora Victim Relief Fund.