The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s Spring exhibition, It’s Not That Serious, is a multimedia group exhibition featuring neon artist James Akers, textile artist Kathryn Knudsen, and painter Jason Hackenwerth.
Akers, Knudsen, and Hackenwerth take the phrase “it’s not that serious” to task, employing wit and playful aesthetics to encourage persistence in the face of meaningful, and sometimes difficult, dialogues. The works in this exhibition are rich, colorful, and labor-intensive, a subversion of the dismissive sentiment at the exhibition’s helm. Beneath the surface of each layer in Hackenwerth’s massive canvases, the curves of Aker’s light work, and Knudsen’s elegant fiber pieces, is a resounding collective call to action that is both approachable and raw. The points of difference between each artist are obvious, running the gamut from lived experience to medium of choice and scale. However, alignment, like the heart of a big conversation, isn’t always obvious. This is especially true when one chooses to solely consider anything from social issues to fine art at face-value—in other words, when one chooses to think of anything as “not that serious.”
For James Akers, the visible remnants of the labor involved in each piece’s creation, and the presence of his hand, is not that serious. The defiance in rejecting a “finishing touch” is a direct challenge to ideas of art-world perfection. While the work can be mounted on the wall in some cases, or placed on an end table or a pristine white pedestal if one wishes, Akers’ playful neon sculptures are more utilitarian than one expects from art available for collection. His experimental, mad scientist zeal and DIY sensibilities aren’t simply left at quirky, descriptive titles like RaspberryRuby, NovialCandle, AquamarineSunrise, WrapDoodle (2023). Every bump, loop, and bend is intuitive and hand-crafted—something rarely thought of when one encounters neon in their everyday life. Yet, they’re equally if not more susceptible to the slightest flicker in global economic markets than the storefronts one associates neon work with. Rather than detach from the unpredictable through-line in his work, Akers brings attention to the manner in which Macro-scale events impact one on a nano-level: the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict drastically increasing the price and availability of noble gasses such as xenon and argon, which are byproducts of manufacturing in the region. Those elements are pivotal not only to Akers’ art, but the research, use, and development of industries from metal fabrication and even anesthesia.
Kathryn Knudsen subtly bridges the pervasive nature of deeply unserious attitudes toward gender and climate change through textured wall sculptures with human names that make the weight of impending doom feel fun, and even cheeky. Her repurposing of discarded materials such as clothing, fibers, and beads, such as those used in Lois (2023), carries a dual purpose. For one, the recycling of textiles to make delicate and precise work encompasses an entire niche of fine art that boomed in the twentieth century and has only blossomed up to the present; the ecological impact of waste is a recent appendage to a larger conversation on textiles. This moral sense of thrift can be seen as a reflection of the ways in which women are made to be responsible for the future of the world and its well-being, socially and ecologically. Knudsen’s ecofeminist touch is purposely transformative, and “pretty”, despite unrelenting gender inequality in both fine art and the world it exists in.
Jason Hackenwerth’s approach to painting is gestural, with each piece functioning as unique collections of emotion and media on a massive scale. Hackenwerth uses anything from spray enamel, to oil and acrylic paint, or collage to evoke the serious-unseriousness of absurdist or avant-garde movements past; he creates negative space in the center of a canvas, splatters and smudges edges, and signs with his initials on the top corners of his pieces. The magnitude of each idea is, in part, due to scale, but their innate energy—be it positive or melancholy—is made possible by the intensity of his dedication to ideas of connectedness as well as an all-encompassing longing for a return to harmony. In works like The Ferryman’s Riddle (2023) and Souls at Sea (2023), Hackenwerth reframes the idea of ocean vessels as industrial, commerical tools and alters them into warm, unfinished messengers of hope in a contentious era of transnational strife; in the former, the daffodil-colored boat to paradise, wherever it may be, remains perpetually in-progress.
Although Akers, Knudsen, and Hackenwerth differ in presentation and process, it is their coupling of tenacity and whimsy that affords the viewer the opportunity to reevaluate both the physical and ideological space they take up in their communities, and the existence of these communities in face of difference. “It’s not that serious," in the context of this exhibition, refers to just how invaluable taking any one thing seriously contributes to the well-being of ourselves and our neighbors.
Moreover, the artists’ intentions are sustained through their diligence—their labor—to participate in conversations where art is often thought of as an ornamental bridge that connects us rather than that which can see us through any given social issue. Akers’ eccentric light-work permits us to reevaluate if perfection should replace wholeness; Knudsen’s use of secondhand textiles to practically reassess modes of sustainability without guilt; Hackenwerth’s paintings encourage us to not simply dream big about peace, but to act big. “It’s not that serious” is one chooses the road of indifference, yet that of Akers, Knudsen, and Hackenwerth, and that of reclaiming that which is in one’s control rather than yielding to what is expected of them.
