A Run is a Wall

Shir Ende

July 31st - August 28th

Viewing Hours:
Saturdays: 12 - 4pm
Sundays: 10am - 2pm

Shir Ende’s practice is rooted in the tensions between movement, space, and the physical constructs which guide (and often inhibit) what forms our movements take. From walls, doorways, windows, and stairs, to the distance from one side of the room to another, Ende turns architecture inside out, in a sense, proposing that our bodies’ motions might sculpt space rather than the other way around. Using choreography as a bodily mechanism for creating and transforming a built environment, Ende reimagines architectural features as more malleable than the forms we’ve come to know.

Ende’s new body of screen and block prints and videos, on view in the exhibition, further these explorations as they reimagine how the hard lines of a floor-plan, blueprint, or architectural rendering might be if instead they were imperfect, humanized, and even ephemeral. Familiar spaces, including Comfort Station itself, are constructed through movements; running, walking sideways, raising one’s arms in a particular way are indexed as motions corresponding to architectural features. For example: “A run is a wall.”

Through her work, Ende demonstrates a softening of barriers and an agency of body. The idea of our movements “making a room” implies shelter as a human gesture of care, concern, or protection. It’s a notion that something can be made from nothing. The role of collaboration here is essential, perhaps because these imagined spaces are “built” through a degree of belief. The labor of these constructions doesn’t require heavy materials or tools; it requires that we trust in our potential to “build” something through small gestures that will, in turn, embrace the particularities of our bodies, moving how they choose.
(Text by Elizabeth Lalley)

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.