No Domain | Carly Mandel + Eileen Isagon Skyers

Littman Gallery | May 5–26, 2017

Reception: Friday, May 5, 6–8 pm

Curated by Carlin Brown

A compendium of objects sit in search of permanence: made tired by decay, exhausted by infinite reproducibility, worn out by their own idleness. Now, when a compendium of digital artifacts and replicas dominate the contemporary experience, rarely do objects themselves act as carriers of information. Objects have been bearers of human knowledge throughout history. A grain of sand. A mirror. A vessel. A significance that persists only in abstraction.

Presented by Littman Gallery, No Domain explores the cultural and temporal breaches proliferated by modes of production and archiving. Mandel examines the tragedies of Timbuktu enacted by Ansar Dine in 2012, and ISIS’s actions in Palmyra in 2016. Each of these actions represent a massive loss of objects of historical significance, highlighting the degradation of the precious in contemporary capitalist society.

Isagon Skyers looks at the collapse and parallel of time under two acutely contemporary pressures: networked culture and surveillance capitalism. By removing the physical aspect of objects from their representations, digitization can enable capital to circulate more freely–even at the cost of obscuring the environmental consequences of material production.

Collectively, No Domain examines the weight and hierarchical value imposed on objects, places and pursuits in the context of accessibility and reproducibility. The works question whether these pursuits are equally futile, or rewarding, within the human experience amid a vastly undifferentiated series of ahistorical symbols.

Carly Mandel is a Brooklyn, NY based artist, born in St. Louis, MO. Mandel graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art’s BFA program in 2015. She has published work with PACKET Biweekly in Brooklyn, NY and Publication Studio in Portland, Oregon. Mandel was also featured in the Luminary’s Lot 49 auction in St Louis, Missouri, and showed in exhibitions with Worksound International in Mexico City, FalseFront, Surplus Space, S1, PLACE gallery and Open Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

Eileen Isagon Skyers is an artist and curator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She has worked with contemporary art and non-profit arts organizations including the USF Contemporary Art Museum (Tampa, FL), The Wassaic Project (Brooklyn, NY), the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), and the Digital Museum of Digital Art (Various Locations). Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico. Her book, Vanishing Acts, was published by LINK Editions (Brescia, Italy) in 2015, and her work has been published in Wreath Vol. 3, Glass Press of the Future (forthcoming), Web Safe 2k16, Printed Web #3, and New World UNLTD 3, among others. She has performed at Littlefield (Brooklyn, NY), Housing Works Books (New York, NY) and Shoot the Lobster (New York, NY), and she is currently an editorial fellow at Rhizome, based out of the New Museum. Skyers holds a BA in Philosophy and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL and an MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR.