An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art
MIT List Visual Arts Center
May 19, 2017–July 16, 2017

An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art brings together a group of twelve international artists to examine the recent multidisciplinary turn towards affect by focusing on artworks that explore how bodies are shaped, modified, or affected by the intensity of their interaction. Many contemporary artists engage with modes of address and content that are tethered to affect yet eschew sentimentality and expressivity. The exhibition presents works that variously investigate our intimate relationships with objects; works that act as vehicles for affective engagement or transactions of desire, including objects that carry the traces of things we can’t see but have to trust, intuit, or perceive in ways that are not related to vision or hearing; and works that are engaged with actions of interpersonal care, trust, intimacy, or love.

Artists included are Andrea Büttner, Sophie Calle, Alejandro Cesarco, Jason Dodge, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Antonia Hirsch, Jill Magid, Park McArthur, Lisa Tan, Erika Vogt, Susanne M. Winterling, and Anicka Yi.

An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art is curated by Henriette Huldisch, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center. The exhibition is accompanied by a 96-page fully illustrated catalogue published by Prestel/DelMonico in association with the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Edited by Henriette Huldisch, the catalogue features essay contributions by Eugenie Brinkema (Associate Professor, Literature Section, MIT), Johanna Burton (Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum), and Emily Watlington (Curatorial Research Assistant, MIT List Visual Arts Center and graduate student, History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture, MIT).

—Maryam Yoon