SV Randall, “Sun Dial + Lemon,” 2024, acrylic on canvas and steel, 60 x 80 x 32 inches
On view at Site 131 gallery, SV Randall’s exhibition, Reply All, includes a series of paintings, welded awnings, freestanding sculptures, and a video work. From medieval tapestry to common office chairs, the exhibition reframes our movement and perspective on technology and our relationship to time.
SV Randall, “/IIIIIII/,” 2024, acrylic on canvas and steel, 60 x 80 x 26 inches
We begin at the gallery entrance where a large yellow painting of a blank calendar attends our view. Its location prompts our attention to time — its fragility and our frail constructions of it. Yellow, the color of caution, of cowardice, of warning, is a metaphor. Electronic calendars maneuver our lives, which with a swift click is editable and seemingly vast. Paper calendars are essentially relics since the advent of technology. Reconsider time as a piece of paper. How would you use it? How would you expand it?
Adjacent to the painting is a series of sculptures titled, Rocks and Cups. While these sculptures are what they sound, they are not what they seem. The rocks are constructed of soft foam and the Styrofoam cups are made of plaster, a building material that hardens after being wet. Altering the physical properties of these common objects considers nature and our systemic habit of waste. We forget ourselves in our daily gestures, we forget rest as we attempt to make the most of time with our tasks, ironically wasting it in the process. Its proximity to the calendar is a reminder.
SV Randall, “Rocks and Cups,” 2024, mixed media, variable dimensions
CC/BCC, a three-foot silver ear installed in the hallway of the gallery, advocates we listen. Throughout the exhibition, the body is either broken down into parts or implied through absence and gesture. This ear is a gateway to the central gallery where a wall-sized relief carving titled, Entangled Hunters, envelops attention.
SV Randall, “CC/BCC,” 2024, silver nitrate on resin and polystyrene foam, 34 x 22 x 6 inches
Entangled Hunters is based off the medieval unicorn tapestries where hunters are entering the woods. In Randall’s iteration, a web of nerves is carved into the background symbolizing anxiety. This relief carving is also painted in yellow, placing it in conversation with the calendar and the constructions and movement of time. Rocks and Cups makes another appearance nearby collapsing time where humankind’s contemporary hunt now involves coffee and screens versus hounds and spears.
SV Randall, “Entangled Hunters,” 2024, acrylic on polystyrene foam, 264 x 168 x 3 inches
A veil of anxiety underlies each of the works in the exhibition. In Another Again, the word “activity,” is repeated in a chain diagram. The generalizations of “activity” renders the impression of life as busywork. Each painting is a composite of smaller rectangular canvas with various shades of the same color repeating itself in the background. Above each painting is a welded steel awning in a matching color. The awnings lack fabric and are not particularly ornate as we commonly see in public. Instead, they function as false shelters and markers of consumerism. Designed to lure us under, stuck with the feeling of decision, indecision, and repetitive movements.
SV Randall, “Another Again,” 2024, acrylic on canvas and steel, 60 x 80 x 20 inches
As simple or straightforward as the paintings may seem, they are immaculate in their craftsmanship and the open metaphors leave the paintings much larger than they already are. The work levels our experience by relating to our common denominator: technology.
Reply All invites us to reconsider that word ‘technology’ in its entirety. The origin of the word comes from the Greek meaning “systematic treatment.” I consider the technology of decision in the painting, Backward/Forward. Where a series of numbered doorknobs are arranged on the canvas like a sample catalog. I consider the technology of habits and pattern in the painting, Haptic, where a pair of hands are on the verge of activity. A web of diagrams overlay the hands as if they are programmed to action.
SV Randall, “Backward/Forward,” 2024, acrylic on canvas and steel, 60 x 80 x 25 inches
SV Randall, “Haptic,” 2024, acrylic on canvas and steel, 60 x 80 x 28 inches
I consider technology overtly in the video work, Out of Order, which is installed on the opposite wall of Entangled Hunters. In this video, two people are standing in a self-checkout line, but the automated register is malfunctioning. Ironically, the camera footage recording this experience is also glitching and pixelating.
The proximity of these two works is another way Randall invites us to review our relationship to time. The relief carving is a still image and the video a moving image, both images depict humans forming a line. The medieval image is full of verve, while the contemporary image with all its advancements is in a waiting period. Time in this sense is contextual and incongruent.
Other gestures toward time are the office chairs sparsely arranged in groups around the gallery. They are coated in plaster and painted in bright colors. The wheels of the chairs no longer function under the hardened plaster. Like the wall calendar, I gather the office chairs are treated like relics and present a warning despite their jovial hues.
SV Randall, “Chairs,” 2024, mixed media, variable dimensions
SV Randall’s, Reply All, highlights humankind’s singular and collective habits and technologies. Habits can be hard to break. We repeat a process until it becomes a representation of ourselves. It could be as simple as the way in which we set reminders or how we form a line physically, figuratively, and temporally. I am challenged with a new perspective on how to articulate time in a world that promises endless possibilities but mires in endless redundancies.
SV Randall’s Reply All is on view at Site 131 Gallery through December 14th.
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