Figures in Space

The mandate of Social Distancing has triggered an anxious reconsideration of our bodies within physical space — specifically, the uniquely fraught space between the self and another. (To cross the street to avoid contact with your neighbor is no longer taboo but, rather, an act of social responsibility.) Artists throughout history, though, have regularly wrestled with how a subject relates to its surrounding space. In these extraordinary times, we can better appreciate, and often physically relate to, effective explorations of this figure-ground push-pull in art. “Figures in Space” looks at the work of SLATE artists through this topical lens of subject separateness.