Curator’s Note: Modernism Unraveling

Excerpt:

I remember the first time I read about the Pruitt- Igoe housing development in St. Louis, a federally funded complex that proposed an innovative solution to the lack of subsidized and accessible housing. Within a decade of its opening, living conditions had declined so dramatically that, in 1972, the majority of the buildings were demolished, in a televised spectacle. This continues to be an example, in my mind, of a failed attempt at modernism, or an unraveling of a traditional form, system, or idea—a project that turns into a parody of itself.

Nora Turato’s govern me harder ¹—52 Walker’s third exhibition—embraced the destruction of assumptions and made a performance of first impressions with artworks that play with ideas of realism, form, and context. Through her practice, the artist simultaneously reduces and amplifies the omnipresent nature of typography and graphic design. This exhibition took stock of how power and order are communicated through this medium, exploding and recontextualizing the language we encounter daily.

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