invasion : evasion

invasion : evasion

Located within the monumental spaces of the Red October Chocolate Factory, invasion : evasion challenged selected artists to stage an invasion that evaded typical classification. Etymological opposites, the words "invasion" and "evasion" have come to take on distinct nuances in contemporary usage, allowing the once-antithetical concepts to coincide within the same movement.

This exhibition commissioned artists to explore this possibility of a simultaneous invasion : evasion within the former factory space. Rather than revert to export-ready manifestos or geographically-derived generalizations (thus reducing cultural production to something quantifiable), invasion : evasion allowed the artists to make their own advances and retreats within the space, as a collaboration or as a individual reaction to their physical environment – and inevitably, to the cultural, political and economic milieu impacting that environment.

Dismissing the clichés of the private museum or the popular, broad-bannered (and often fictitious) presentation of a unified market front, invasion : evasion enlists projected that answered to the space itself, and not to market demands, enabling artists to experiment with scale and site-specificity.

As the first stage of this invasion, part of the factory had been converted into an open studio, where the twenty selected artists could work directly within the space. This gesture not only encouraged the site-specific nature of the works, it included the creative production into the exhibition itself, as the artists discussed, debated and collaborated around works in process. Additionally, the studio accommodated a series of lectures, round tables and events initiated by the participating artists.

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