Standard Deviations
SANDRA ERBACHER

EXHIBITION: JANUARY 15TH - FEBRUARY 14TH
Reception: JANUARY 17TH 6-9PM
TALk: JANUARY 31st 6PM

GRIN is pleased to present Standard Deviations, a solo exhibition by Sandra Erbacher.

BUREAUCRACY, DEF:

An administrative or social system that relies on a set of rules and procedures, separation of functions and a hierarchical structure in implementing controls over an organization, government or social system.

Sandra Erbacherʼs latest works examine the institutional as an abstract, formless, and bureaucratic entity. The objects incorporated in her work, whether photographic or sculptural in form are typically found within an institutional setting: an ordinary office plant, cream-coloured carpeting, a standard beige box fan, or a uniform, avocado green wall-mounted telephone. The sole purpose of the existence of these objects seems to be to organize human activity, to maximize efficiency, maintain order and thus aid in the imposition of a rule-based hierarchical system of rational control.

What happens though, if said objects refuse to conform to their standard mode of operation? This is the question at the heart of Erbacherʼs inquiry.  Her objects are activated through material interventions and, as a result, display a rebelliousness that could potentially pose a threat to the institutional order: A carpet covering a gallery wall with an anarchy symbol shaved into its fibres; a larger-than-life photograph of a small box fan filled with concrete; and an HVAC system that emits a muffled version of Roxetteʼs ʻDangerous’. Instead of promoting an efficient work-flow, Erbacherʼs objects are unruly. They break down, become dysfunctional and fail to fulfil their purpose. Yet it is exactly their failure that holds their potential to subvert the systems and structures they are supposed to perpetuate from within.

SELECTED PRESS
Key to Erbacher is interactivity, by Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe,  2015
Office Space: Sandra Erbacher’s Institutional Critique Takes Aim at Modern Bureaucracies,  Heather Corcoran, Artsy Editorial, 2015
Weekly Wrap-Up for January 16th, 2015, Elizabeth Devlin, FLUX. Boston, 2015

 Sandra Erbacher is a German artist living and working in Providence, RI. She has earned her BFA from Camberwell College of Art, London (2009) and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014).

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Mana Contemporary Chicago, Circuit 12 Contemporary, Dallas, The Contemporary, London, Kunstverein Speyer, Germany, Umbrella Gallery, Leeds, and Five Years, London. She is the recipient of the 2014 Chazen Prize to an Outstanding MFA Student, a University of Wisconsin fellowship and the Blink Grant for Public Art 2013 awarded by the city of Madison.

sandraerbacher.com/

Hum is a response to a prompt by artist Hannah Weinberger and forms part of Do-it, an open-ended exhibition format based on a series of “scores”, or written instructions by artists, as a point of departure. Weinberger’s instructions included a list of onomatopoeias that had to be incorporated into a work in some shape or form. In Hum I read out Weinberger’s list of words in a dull, monotonous voice, potentially belonging to a fictitious official, much like the character of Gerd Wiesler in the movie The Lives of the Others, the Stasi officer who is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman and initially reports on the events in Dreyman’s daily life in an emotionless, dutiful voice. While I begin by reading out Weinberger’s list of words in a clear and well pronounced manner, I continue to layer words using an audio software program until they turn into an unintelligible, abstract, non-linear soundscape. The viewer can listen to and interact with this audio piece upon lifting the receiver of a 1970s wall-mounted telephone installed in the exhibition space. Hum is part of an on-going investigation into language as a system through which ideologies can be established, perpetuated, as well as undermined.