IN “SAFE” SETTINGS: Works by Megan Scheffer
MAY 1 - MAY 22, 2021
VENUE: RedLine Contemporary Art Center/ 2350 Arapahoe Street, Denver CO 80205
VISIT: REDLINE OPEN HOURS
In “Safe” Settings, a solo exhibition by Megan Scheffer, includes intricate drawings, sculptures, and photographs that investigate, question, and attempt to translate systems and definitions of mental health. Works in the exhibition visually abstract mental illness, asylums, and the clinical and subjective language within the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
In a series of photographs taken in the Austin State Hospital (previously known as the State Lunatic Asylum) and transferred onto packing tape, In “Safe” Settings focuses on absence and the institutional architecture of psychological spaces.
In A Reductionistic Anachronism connecting line drawings investigate obsessive, methodical actions that attempt to translate emotional, nonverbal, physical understandings of mental health into visual language.
The Clear Virtue of Creating a Common Language for Communication is a series of line drawings that conceptually represent the number of specific mental disorder codes defined by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Masking tape sculptures Limbic and Criteria render line drawings into abstract physical forms that mimic the subjectivity of classification and the desire to relate information that appears similar.
In “Safe” Settings looks at mental illness through the lens of absence, trauma, loss, and the innate human desire to catalogue, diagnose, and fill in the gaps. 10% of any artwork purchased will be donated to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.
This exhibition is part of Checking In, a state-wide collaboration designed to provide platforms of connection between artists, curators, businesses, cultural institutions and communities who have been in isolation but collectively have space or creative works to offer and/or exchange.
