Those Who Wait at the Contemporary Art Gallery

The division between perspectives on things like climate change and nature vs nurture raises concerns about the legitimacy institutional power in the age of internet and artificial intelligence. Not more places signify this as much as spheres of immigration where people have no choice but to be at the whims of such seemingly impartial yet inadvertently biased systems of implementation. This is rift is what Shreshta Rit Premnath explores at the exhibition of Those Who Wait at the Contemporary Art Gallery this fall. While truth is supposedly a science to many, sociological disciplines like psychology and economics are art arts as well. We recognize that the 19th century was full of pathologies that lead to countless labels that still exist and or have been refuted to this day. Regardless, such notions may or may not be heavy handed, and it is not necessarily easy due to political correctness to bring such matters up with patients let alone art viewers. Going into the installation by Shreshta Rit Premnath at the Contemporary art gallery one is imbued into such confrontational relations. I am met with the collage like impression of the installation piece between text and surface, flat and whole, big and small, intricate and goofy. In a corner under a glass table a tiny braided patterned sack contained in a museum box relieves tension from text hung from banners on the ceiling. The different planes of hanging banners forms a type of texture perhaps that feels as though you are being guided through or somehow being insulated by a type of administration if you will throughout a place that seems close as home yet far as a clinic perhaps. All these things together take on a sense of calm, relief, and also memory as if at once being okay and embraced by the mind regardless of the body or visa versa. As such, a type of holism perhaps that gets to the core of one’s own understanding of history without ever being so clear perhaps. Yet I am also confused as to how such elements could even seem calming as if the gravity and weight is denied and things are allowed to support themselves. On the other side a room harbours all that is moved on from perhaps. A set of chain linked fences meander with foam padding and tape that cradles surfaces throughout a bright lit white institutional sort of space. A convergance of randomply placed bright colours, paired with tones of grey in a large open generic looking square structure all together somehow suggests a type of improvisational forgiveness between what is mentioned/obvious and what not. There is a relief that these items seem to be placed amd meant for al types of people even which makes it also makes suchsterile items humane perhaps. In this work Prenath comments upon the current and ongoing struggles of migrant problems in the US and abroad. A type of homage to the impartial protection and duress of such institutional disciples that still have a difficult time dealing with and understandibng abstract things such as race, gender, and class as well. As such we get a type of dialogue with the situation that takes place there, a type of encasement perhaps just not only of the difficulties raised by issues regarding labels that somehow seem to confine but also hold a potential to protect and nurture given and acknowledging the creative ingeneuity and functional leniency behind such institutional realities perhaps. The show runs at the Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver from Oct. 11 2019-Jan 5 2020 as well as throughout various locations abroad as well.