a tacit agreement
“a tacit agreement” is a new installation by artist Micheal Casselli. Casselli’s work is rooted in performance and installation, leading Casselli to produce and engineer the monolithic and performative objects that make up his installation. “a tacit agreement” asks the viewer to confront the elusive history and complicated administration of capital punishment.
From the Artist:
My work is invested in the hybridization of forms, processes and media. In my initial attempts to understand the role these interests played in my work, I staged large-scale outdoor mixed-media performance based installations. It was through these that I focused on implications of presence in sense-based perception and the physicality inherent in performance. The work that was able to address this questioning without relying upon traditional narrative structures, there was no “story”, only implications. Performance allowed me to produce work that left very little physical residue, the work continues on as in memory and confronts the dominance of object based work. I distrust the object if its sole purpose is to represent.
My interest in presence and role the spectator plays in the process of completing the work is a constant thread that runs through my work. By eliminating physical boundaries between the viewer and the work, I provide an opening through which they can enter into it. I am interested in creating an experience, allowing an active engagement with the work instead of a passive viewing.
My vocabulary continues to expand, searching for more subtle ways of responding to these concerns though I have come to the conclusion that the work is intended to ask these questions, not to answer them. Making work is most exhilarating when collisions are valued as an essential part of the process and by engaging a dialectic structure of inquiry the collisions are always present.
Exhibition unfortunately never opened due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns occurring the week before the opening reception. From the exhibition’s curator Ashley Jude Jonas:
“Michael Casselli's "a tacit agreement" was installed in early March and remained in the gallery (living room) until the end of May. Only a handful of people saw it in real life.
"a tacit agreement"....a lethal injection table laying vacant, encapsulated by walls and windows...a chamber for watching someone die at the hands of the state...a fully functioning crucifix emboldened by the theatrics of a red curtain it towered in front of...two objects designed for taking life confronting one another in a living room, during a pandemic that forced the country to reckon, still and again, with the fact that racism is also a pandemic.
We really really wish you could have seen it and we could have talked about it with you.”
All documentation by photographer Andy Snow
