Curated by Deborah Hesse
Immerse all your senses in an exhibition that brings together twelve artists who create high and low-tech interactive works that encourage participation, cooperation, and empathy. In this multisensory show, viewers are invited to engage directly and physically with the artwork in novel and surprising ways.
Listen to invasive insects, conjure memories around a musical tea table, discern a secret message, draw collaboratively, feel braille-like beaded rivers, configure touch screen sound patterns, inhabit a parallel world, smell a fragrant bouquet of earth, gun powder, and garlic, or rub a text drawing of affirmation. As a group, these works provide a fresh way to experience art that recalls the friendly, non-competitive, team-building spirit of the 1970s "New Games” movement while also incorporating subversive strategies to reflect on current global environmental, political, and cultural concerns. The show also aims to welcome and empower those with sensory and other challenges by offering new ways to experience art. To The Touch invites the viewer to be directly involved in the artist experience and helps us break down the barrier between observation and action.
