Exhibition Statement

STRANGE DIAGRAMS: FEELING SCALE

Diagrams map ideas the way maps chart territories. They have their own stylistic history and visual language—you can probably guess which one of the works in this exhibition was based on a diagram originally meant to speak to children. What diagrams don’t address is the emotional impact of the information they so coolly contain. Taken together, the four wall works in Strange Diagrams re-imagine historic diagrams with an emotional response. They chart a trajectory from the mid-20th century to our time, starting with Figure 1: The Keeling Curve, marking the moment in 1960 when the journal Tellus published Charles David Keeling’s graph showing a steady annual increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, evidence of industrial culture’s impact on climate. Fig. 2 Stress/Strain is based on a diagram used all the time in modern engineering, the stress/strain plot. Here it mutates to become our stress and strain in a warming, technologized and menacing environment, despite Figure 3: Sustenance, a diagram showing the persistent miracle of the relationship between sun and earth that feeds life through photosynthesis. The trajectory lands in present time with Figure 4: Aggregation of Fluctuations (The Difference That Makes a Difference), Joshua DiCaglio’s 2020 diagram suggesting the potential power of scalar thinking. Will the Strange Protesters in the window, muddling through a torrent of fears, threats and conflicts, be able to use scalar thinking to make a difference? Join us, and them, for the activations in the final passage of Strange Diagrams, a site for performances and conversations about the future.

— Meredith Tromble