“An Ordinall of Alchimy”
March 30 – April 14, 2010
300 Nevins Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 12-6 pm
with Matt Bettine, Joey Cruz, Kathryn Cornelius, Gabriella D’Italia, Scott Jarrett,
Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, John Wanzel, Laura E. Wertheim, and Bryan Wilson
March 30, 2010 – April 14, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, March 27, 7–9 pm
Panel: “Spinning Straw into Gold — Art, Value, and the Alchemical Collector,”
featuring Mark Dion, Sal Randolph, McKenzie Wark, and Robert Williams
Saturday, March 27, 6–7 pm
“An Ordinall of Alchimy” inaugurates “999,” an occasional series of exhibitions presented by Cabinet in which artists are invited to assemble work under a single constraint: everything installed in the gallery must have been acquired on Ebay for a total of less than 999 USD. When the exhibition comes down, its contents are offered for sale as a single item, once again on Ebay.
In 2009, Mark Dion, Robert Williams, and their students at the Pennsylvania artists’ colony Mildred’s Lane used Cabinet’s invitation as an opportunity to explore the theme of alchemical transformation. “An Ordinall of Alchimy” comprises the objects they assembled, a collection keyed to the seven basic processes of practical alchemy: Calcination, Fixation, Solution, Distillation, Sublimation, Separation, and Projection.
Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by Paul Singh.
About the Organizers and Panelists
Mark Dion is an artist based in Pennsylvania. His work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between “objective” scientific methods and “subjective” influences.
Robert Williams is an artist & academic based in the UK, where is the head of the Fine Art Programme at Cumbria Institute of the Arts/University of Cumbria since 1998. Williams’s interdisciplinary practice encompasses an interest in epistemology and systems of knowledge from the hermetic to the scientific.
Sal Randolph lives in New York and makes art involving gift economies, social interactions, public spaces and publishing, including Opsound, an open exchange of copyleft music; the Free Biennial and Free Manifesta, a pair of open “biennials”; and Money Actions, an ongoing series of interventions in which she has given away several thousand dollars to members of the public. See salrandolph.com for more information.
McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard UP), Gamer Theory (Harvard UP), and various other things. He teaches at the New School for Social Research.
About Cabinet
Featuring exhibitions of both contemporary art and historical materials, as well as an eclectic schedule of talks, screenings, and events, Cabinet’s space was inaugurated in the fall of 2008 to extend the magazine’s engagement with art and culture into the public realm. For information, contact Cabinet at 718 222 8434 or via email at press@cabinetmagazine.org.
Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 12–6 pm
