Donna Akrey’s aesthetic – I hesitate to even use that word, as it’s so loaded, too heavy, for the works at Rodman Hall that Donna invites us to (genuinely) play with, or that might hold us up (a shaped cushion attached to the wall, easing my lower back pain as I lean against it) – is an awareness and an immersion in the moment, unreservedly.

I’m reminded of Salman Rushdie’s assertion – from the mouth of one of his narrators, a photographer – that “realism isn’t a set of rules, it’s an intention.” A directness that eschews rhetoric or hesitation is demanded when you engage with Also Also; the front three rooms are Akrey’s, and their domestic history helps to suggest an ease, and accessibility, with the works. There’s even a station for “collaborating” with the artist, blurring lines between Akrey and ourselves further.

Akrey’s art seems to eschew academic language or prohibitive discourses about interactivity and access and expectations with “art” and the “gallery” that are deterrents – prophylactics, really – to immediacy – to the very ideas of interactivity, even – for the individual viewer (…just like that last sentence, hah, may demonstrate. Sorry, but not really).

Marcie Bronson, the curator of this exhibition (again, perhaps too formal a word: let’s say collaborator. That’s also a nod to Bronson’s ability, as she’s mid wifed the works of Amy Friend and Gunilla Josephson previously) suggested this contradiction. She and Akrey toured visitors through the show and Bronson offered that Akrey’s solo exhibition Also Also is about what we see, how we see and what do we expect to see, in the two rooms (and more, and more on that in a moment) at Rodman.

Another amusing comment; when Akrey said that there’s the idea that she might be “doing this art thing wrong.” I’d proffer that her work is about fun, both facile and deeper, and the enjoyment of the visitor, in a way that relies on their good intentions, “interacting without malice” (quoting Bronson, again). There’s a refusal to be “serious” in many of the works Akrey presents, refusing to have their squareness forced into a round hole of some external theoretical or academic dryness.

The curatorial / artistic / communal statement elaborates further on this desire to evoke a freshness in gallery behaviour: “Akrey is interested in how habit shapes the way we experience and engage with the world around us. Rooted in her astute observation of patterns of communication and consumption, her work humorously intervenes to raise discussion about social and environmental issues, often responding directly to a particular site or community.” She further sums up her approach: “I imagine the absurd as real, because sometimes the real is so absurd.”

When Akrey spoke of the ideas that inspire Middle Ground, with reflected light, mirrors and an activity as soothing as its mindless, she reminisced of walking around rooms as a child with a mirror propped under her chin, traipsing about in a manner absurd and untroubled by what “walking” and “looking” is “expected” to be….

There’s a power in enchanting details: the shiny silver elbows of the softish sculpture in the front room, like a person’s bent arm, fabric wrinkling like a sleeve. The brief Fireplace Videos are odd vignettes. Unrelated, non narrative and non committal, they’re moments in time that are being shared with you, looping, and undemanding of any conceptually rigorous looking. They’re similar to those burning yule log X – Mas channels (the first Fireplace video is white sleetsnow spatterflying across a flat aquamarine field, beautifully hypnotic. Another is of the same plant sitting on the fireplace below the flatscreen, more enticing on screen than in life).

As you sit and watch these, you begin to feel like the plants in the work behind you (Plant Life), ebbing and slowly moving (breathing?), one plant to one blocky television. All nine perch on plinths, near the window, like “real” plants might be placed in any homey space. Relaxing, perhaps vegetating (you and the plants), if you will.

Pieces here extend back 15 years, but there’s newer works (one piece is a bit lesser, or a bit different, now, that the Levine Flexhaug show is gone, as it was responsive to that. But as it’s titled ⅓ ⅓ ⅓ , we can just say ⅓ has shifted). Her collaborators include artists like Margaret Flood (with Eclipse), preparateur Matthew Tegel (the previously cited ⅓ ) and hopefully us, too. A workstation with tools and supplies is provided, with an encouraging tag (listing the workstation and shelves displaying works as by “Akrey and gallery visitors”).

There’s also a site-specific outdoor installation that relies on the cooperation of neighbourhood residents in Rodman’s immediate area. This series of pieces can be best experienced at night: as I left Rodman, the evening of the talk / tour, the soft glows of the tiny box works placed at several houses on St. Paul Crescent were unexpected moments of joy and light. Guideposts without a map, or destination, just a marker to be enjoyed for its simple being.  

In Jorge Luis Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beasts, he cites the rareness of a child’s first visit to a zoo: how these animals are exotic and unknown wonders, unmediated by any expectations. Later, the child might run to see the majestic lions, and habitual, mediated expectation replaces wonder and awe. There’s an element of that in Also Also: go rub your face against the works in Prop, let the soft bulges massage your back, and consider a gallery that might be a comfortable, welcoming space where there is no misbehaving, just enjoyment. Donna Akrey’s Also Also is at Rodman until April 30th.

All images here are courtesy, and copyright, of the artist.