PATRICIA SANDONIS

A broken glass bottle, bravely balancing itself upright. The sound of an ambulance wraps itself into a song. Wet glass pitches a frequency when touched. Rainwater, softly mixing with sand, slowly becomes more and more steady, until it has formed into concrete. A beech leaf, about to unfold, with many others about to follow.

The group exhibition “Promising Premises” presents different artistic approaches toward the concept of ‘gleaning’, touching upon the relationship between gathering and memory in urban-rural spaces.

‘Gleaning’, most simply put, is the act of gathering what was left behind on the land after the harvest. What is collected is what has slipped through the established structures. It is a practice that is hopeful, which takes on a considerate attitude, and in Western and Central European tradition it was done in groups.

Today, the practice has evolved and expanded in both its meaning and attitude, as can be seen in Agnès Varda’s documentary film “The Gleaners and I”. One picks up a potato, an object, or a thought and thinks: How can this be used? In times of (in)tangible scarcity, economic inflation, political uncertainty, and a deep climate crisis, perhaps we can reach for this practice to connect with our social and ecological environment. Sometimes it means leaving something behind, holding space.

Because ‘gleaning’ is first and foremost a way of perceiving, it means keeping your senses open and looking for the disregarded, something deemed unimportant at first glance. It balances between viewing and evaluating. When doing so we practice being attentive.

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In five contemporary positions, the group exhibition takes the ideas of ‘gleaning‘ off the field and looks into their translations in the artistic realm. Through installations, sculptures, photographic, and sonic works the participating artists display a vast array of artistic ‘gleaning’: from scouring archives and adapting existing works to developing new (site-specific) ones, while reinterpreting, recontextualizing, and rerouting the recognizable.

They shift thematically between the urban and ecological, the archived and the present, the self and the collective, and rigid structures and the soft organic currents in between, all while engaging with space and place or ways to it, through it. The title “Promising Premises” alludes to the hopeful wandering through the (city)- landscape, inviting the audience to notice and re-evaluate the familiar: beech leaves, broken glass, murmurs, fluidics, and concrete. And thus, to enter spring as gleaners themselves.