Manal Kara
THE VIEWING-ROOM VS. THE ADORING-GAZE

September 18 - October 25, 2020
*Opening September 18, 2-9pm

THE VIEWING-ROOM VS. THE ADORING-GAZE

(from dream journal, September 2019)

[VIEWING-ROOM #1]
The scene opens on a conference room where business people are sitting and standing around a conference table. At the head of the table is a big drop-down screen where we see their counterparts in Tokyo, Lagos, Frankfurt, etc.

Booming disembodied infomercial voice: Boring boardroom meeting?

[VIEWING-ROOM #2]
We are in the basement of a police precinct, glimpsing an interrogation through the other side of a one-way mirror.

Booming disembodied infomercial voice: Boring interrogation??

[VIEWING-ROOM #3]
The scene is the glass at a zoo, at the big cat house or the primate house, or the polar bear enclosure. Through the glass, we see individuals pacing and exhibiting distressed behavior. Booming disembodied infomercial-voice: Boring zoo???

[THE ADORING-GAZE]
Booming disembodied infomercial voice: Turn any Viewing-Room into the Adoring-Gaze!!!! [harp sounds]

We are transported to a sort of amalgam of all Viewing-Rooms, perhaps the ur-Viewing-Room or the Platonic ideal of Viewing-Rooms. There are glass panes and screens all around. On the floor is a case holding six eggs and an object that looks like a sort of oversized bar jigger. Its handle is a blow tube. We place an egg into one of the cups of the jigger and blow into the tube, and a cow hatches from the egg and stands in the room, gazing at us lovingly. We hatch the rest of the cows by the same method. They are standing all around gazing intently with their huge beautiful fringed eyes. The screens and windows have all dissolved, we are now in an endless field, surrounded by cows and their adoring eyes and eyelashes. The Viewing-Room has been transformed into the Adoring-Gaze.

Manal Kara is a Moroccan-American self-taught artist and poet based in Gary, IN. They have exhibited work extensively in Chicago and New York as well as internationally in Istanbul, Vienna, and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Song of the Other Worm, Prairie, Chicago, and Tearassin' Like a Slug Outta Heaven, Basketshop, Cincinnati, OH. They have participated in residencies at ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions), Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency, and September Spring at the Kesey Farm, and they are looking forward to a residency at the American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings in Tucson, AZ

COVID-19: *There will be a Soft Opening Reception from 2-9pm on September 18th and the gallery will be open from 12-6pm Saturdays, Sundays and by appointment throughout the week. Visitors must wear masks in the gallery spaces at all times and there will be masks and sanitizer available onsite. There will a limited number of visitors allowed in the spaces and social distancing of six feet will be required. Our courtyard garden will be open for the duration of the exhibition.

Press: The New York Times