8                23457



ABOUT

Janus Project is an alternative exhibition space previously inhabited as a family dwelling, occupying two floors of a large house with living spaces above. The hybrid architectural styles and domestic setting lend layered readings of the work that temporarily coexist within its walls.

Janus Project invites artists, theorists and writers to contribute to thematic exhibitions. Curated with a historically materialist approach, the exhibitions attempt to illuminate how the history embedded in the work conditions its contemporary configuration.



CURATORIAL STATEMENT

There are two rooms that occupy a certain space. This place has existed before, but it has not always, nor will it. Through the depths of the earth beneath this space’s foundation all the way up to the limits of the sky above its roof resides the residue of what once was—what was once lived, thought, and experienced, stretching back till time immemorial.

Like a repressed memory, this history only becomes comprehensible when we peer beyond the surface of its exposed remains, and search out its immutability within its fleetingness. Despite our expectations or intentions, the result transforms its present (Jetztzeit) material configuration. This very moment yields the potential of experiencing the perspective of Janus, reinventing both the past once lived, and the future to come. This space is meant to foster such potentials.

The Janus Project is an exhibition space for artists, theorists, collectors, and writers to take part in the endeavor of locating emancipatory elements of historical and contemporary cultural creations. Here, such objects will be treated as historical in themselves—but still bearing life—whether they are the products of yesterday or yesteryear. The debris of our past, which has its birthmark stamped on the present, can act as a source for philosophical and historical truth, but cannot be expressed and transcended without us—the miners of history—as its articulating subject. Thus, Janus Project’s concern is to recover and make apparent the history of the products and ideas of our past to inform and direct the present world we have given rise to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


ORGANIZERS

Chris Mansour

Founder, curator, writer.

Margo Wolowiec
Curator, PR, web design.

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS + WRITERS

Tatiana Istomina
Bret Schneider
Jamie Keesling
Margo Wolowiec
Em Meine
Haseeb Ahmed
Azra Aksamija
Azin Feizabadi

Laura Lee Schmidt
Daniel Baird
Rob Andrade

Aylin Soyer Tangen

Gene Kim