PREVIEW: ELSEWHERE

“So I work in finance, but I find myself daydreaming sometimes or just thinking about being somewhere else. I mean,

I think we all kind of sit at our desks sometimes and wonder, what are we doing?”

So says Liz Devlin of FLUX.Boston, financial analyst by day and fine art blogger/curator by night (and weekends and lunch breaks). Her latest curatorial gig at the Distillery Gallery, Elsewhere, is aptly titled. The show, like its creator, looks yearningly past everyday monotony. Photographs of the featured artists’ work on Devlin’s website depict a surreal, slightly off-kilter vision:

a hooded figure staring across a windy landscape, a herd of sheep throwing themselves off a cliff into the dark ocean, an astronaut silhouetted against a cloudless sky by a pair of smokestacks.

Elsewhere features work by 17 local artists in various mediums, from sculpture to painting to site-specific installations. Distillery’s exposed piping and irregular angles make it an unusual space, Devlin says, and because of this the installations have been the most challenging aspect of the exhibition. “I’ve always been drawn to spaces that are kind of different, not just four white walls [that] you just put paintings on,” she explains.

With Elsewhere, Devlin hopes not only to disrupt visitors’ sense of reality, but to transport them away from a conventional art viewing experience.

The less Distillery feels like a gallery, she reasons, the better off everyone will be.

“I just kind of want it to be … a low-key sort of experience where people feel comfortable looking at art, talking about art, taking cell phone pictures of art.”

Maybe someday that won’t require such a stretch of the imagination.

ELSEWHERE

ON DISPLAY THU 9.20.12-FRI 10.26.12
DISTILLERY GALLERY
516 E 2ND ST.
SOUTH BOSTON
OPENING RECEPTION THU 9.20.12. 7PM-9PM/ALL AGES/FREE
@FLUXBOSTON
GALLERY.DISTILLERYBOSTON.COM