Pump Project is pleased to announce an ambitious solo exhibition of new work by Seth Orion Schwaiger. Complex 1 flexes the limits of Pump Project Arts Complex, exhibiting installation based works in several previously unused spaces. The porous nature of these works and the exhibition as a whole disrupts the boundaries between art and the outside world, dissolving the notion of viewership as something that is donned before entering exhibition space and discarded after — or even between individual discrete works. Complex 1 encourages a more fluid form of viewership. In this type of exploration needed to traverse the exhibition, human curiosity can be stoked, human yearning can be invoked, and discovery becomes possible.
Through non-linear, but conceptually linked experience, the exhibition facilitates an awareness of the construction of meaning. Several of the works on exhibition unfold in one way when first viewed, but given a new vantage point deeper into the complex their meaning fundamentally shifts, emotionally flavored by the physical change in the viewer's position. The second experience taints the first, muddling into understanding — less defined, less sure, but more rich and nuanced.
Combining figurative imagery and architectural interventions, the exhibition frames Pump Project as super-organism rather than inanimate building. Within that analogy, viewers and artists become circulatory agents of this semi-living system, bringing into question the boundaries of one's own person and hierarchical distinctions of society, community, and individual. Running threads unique to life-systems punctuate the show, among these are references to consumption, creation, hope and failure, discovery, transformation, and death.
-Pump Project Art Complex
