The Cold Read

Session III

a line and a long gaze

May 14 - June 02, 2022

The Cold Read began as a way of organizing an art community within our hectic everyday lives, aiming to initiate a continued dialogue and investment in each other's practices. Each phase of The Cold Read builds on itself to create a space for the participating artists to initiate and engage in critical discussions, through prompt-based exhibitions and by simply hanging out with one another. a line and a long gaze features work from The Cold Read's third session: Henderson Blumer, Rachel Borenstein, Lawrence Chit, Pui Tiffany Chow, Kim Garcia, Nicole Gelormino, Gosia Herc, Jackson Hunt, Laura Judkis, Ellen Khansefid, Amy MacKay, Carol Anne McChrystal, Reinhart Selvik, Liz Stringer, and Cove Tsui. 

a line and a long gaze

a line and a longer gaze

a line and the longest gaze

How does looking with care become the interwoven suggestion of our relationships and time together? The Cold Read is like a ball of twine, where a single line - composed of various backgrounds - overlap and get entangled. Can we begin to map this complex mass of connection and communication? Through attention, patience, and friendship, this long line is unraveled and traced inch by inch.

The ideas in this exhibition represent a synthesis of various traditions and influences. The line is imagined as a conduit between artists and repeatedly shifts in meaning in this exhibition: 

• lines as a misinterpretation of a boundary

• lines as entanglement 

• lines as stories

• lines as dialogue

• lines as orbit and gravitational pull 

• lines as points of connection, between one "point" and another

• natural lines, as re-examined borders

• lines as another thing's existence

• lines as a form of agency

• lines as rhythm

• lines as lineage

• lines as the division between private and public 

The gaze is the absence of our bodies and the tender acknowledgment of each artist's work. The viewer is welcomed as an interlocutor of The Cold Read's entangled constellation. 

Kim Garcia initiated the Cold Read in 2018 as an online critique group facilitated through email. Every other Sunday, a presenting artist shares images, texts, or videos with context about their work. The rest of the group takes a week to write a thoughtful response about the pieces, leaving the artist with critical feedback to read, evaluate and assimilate.