The turbid tides: Phil McGaughy

March 2017On view March 3rd – April 2nd, 2017 Opening Reception First Friday, March 3rd, 6pm – 10pmPerformance from 181 collective begins at 7pmWhy consider fulcrums in a world filled with gravity?Somewhere suspended in the fluid dynamics of any post-deluge event lie many foggy memories that often get approximated by believers of probabilities and their tales of continuity: accretion and erosion forever holding outstretched arms to each other over a rusted out teeter-totter. Practice gallery along with Phil McGaughy and the 181 collective have decided that the evening of March 3rd, 2017 will be all about the continued investigation into that rusty impartial arbiter of gravity that we have accepted as the never ending truth.Using an array of gravity abiding technologies, new queries will be made into architectural props that are beholden to the recently unpredictable scales of green-screened justice. Phil and 181 collective will either say “yea” or unknowingly abstain from the sentient influences (ghosts) that reside in these objects. If these interactions seem foreign in nature, then the blame will have to rest on the rusty fulcrum that has not faithfully rendered a probability as the truth, therefore acquiescing its authority to whatever lies in between the turbid tides.The turbid tides is an extension of the NEA funded IMMERSION art residency Phil McGaughy did this past fall at the Anacostia art center in Washington DC. For that show, McGaughy put his work in the context of a spiritual/historical frame of his own invention that he calls “GHOST TECH,” which conceptualizes relationships among disparate generations of human technology, the natural world and its processes, and the evolutionary developments created by these interactions.Phil McGaughy grew up in Washington DC and received his BFA from the San Francisco Art institute in 1992 and his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2016. He is also known by his stage name “Phil Crumar” in the late 90’s world of quirky hip-hop emcees that released DIY desktop computer recordings on established record labels.As a collective the 181 is interested in creating situational compositions out of the sample merging and strangely hybridized “what ifs” of information transmissions and material demonstrations. Artists, musicians, a physicist/electronic engineer, a mushroom forager/rockhound, and a linotype operator—any attempts to formalize their practice they view with distress. Brandon Boan / Abby Donovan / Aaron KHoffer/ Tom Hughes / Mike Marks / Joe Netta / Jason Rhodes