Wavelength Space is a new, contemporary, artist-run space located in downtown Chattanooga off McCallie Avenue. The gallery hosts themed exhibitions that combine art from area and national, emerging to mid-career artists.
During June and July, Wavelength has partnered with a curatorial collective and digital artist residency known as Mineral House Media. Mineral House Media is pleased to present their third annual group exhibition, Comfort Riddle, opening at Wavelength Space on June 19, 2021 from 5-8 pm.
Comfort Riddle is a dazzling combination of abstract and conceptual works by Anna Buckner (North Carolina), Jennifer Crescuillo (Silver Point, TN), Paige Greeley (Philadelphia), Jodi Hays (Nashville), Ayo Janeen Jackson (New York), Todd Jones (Ohio), Kirby Miles (Chattanooga), and Beth Reitmeyer (Nashville). Each artist participated in Mineral House’s 2020 digital residency program, a monthly Instagram takeover and interview series.
Comfort Riddle is an encounter with a diverse array of ideas, media, and artistic process. You will find everything from immersive installation, to figurative painting, quirky functional glass works, sculptures made of paint, digitally printed tapestries, shimmering poetry, African American folklore, to a plethora of mixed media and collage works.
The artists who participate in Mineral House’s Instagram takeover use the platform to share glimpses of their studio practice and to reveal stories and connections within their works. Freedom, diversity, and experimentation are celebrated by Mineral House curators and this show is certainly emblematic of those aims. Despite the wide variety of concepts being explored by artists in the show, there is an abundance of curious connections and shimmering repetitions between works that are best absorbed in person.
So what is Comfort Riddle? A riddle is an invitation to dwell. It is a poetry of the twist and tangle, enigma, particles assembling, dissolving, and reforming. It is a powerful puzzle that engages others in the divining of difficult truths. In mystery or fairytale, a riddle is a coat of sugar over fear, an alluring glimmer that draws one on toward a better life.
As we find ourselves cautiously emerging from over a year of upheaval and tragedy, we are struck with the persistence of the unresolved, and made aware of our means of comforting ourselves through it. This manifests in forms of self-nourishment as well as social indictment as we engage our skills to establish a more comfortable future. The artists in Comfort Riddle each demonstrate an investment in the conundrum.
Through material experimentation, humor, poetry, and examination of both personal and collective states, they wield the unknown to transform reality.
Comfort Riddle will be free and open to the public during the opening reception and will be open-by-appointment for the duration of the show. Bookings can be made via Wavelength Space’s Instagram (@wavelength_space).