Kristin Bauer: Untitled Gestures #4 and #5

May 30, 2020 - ongoing
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

Multimedia artist Kristin Bauer’s Untitled Gestures series presents poetic text installations intended to foster a sense of human connection amid concern about physical contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. The series began during the early days of the shelter-in-place order, when numerous businesses were temporarily closed, and people were quarantined to their homes. As an artistic response to the emotional and psychological toll of the pandemic, Bauer began making publicly accessible text installations made from white vinyl and placed in the storefront windows of local businesses. Bauer states that, “I found myself compelled to make this work increasingly accessible to the public—to businesses and others—in response to the incredible isolation of quarantine and shuttered art spaces, trying to speak into the vacuum I felt in the absence of physical/energetic connection of artistic exchange.”
Bauer created site-specific works for the main entry of SMoCA, Untitled Gestures #4, and along an interior curved wall of the Museum, Untitled Gestures #5. The exterior work reads, “AND A SHARED LONGING CONNECTS US,” and the interior text reads, “ACROSS AN EVER SHIFTING TERRAIN.” Bauer’s poetic musings offer a sense of hope while acknowledging that the future will look very different.


Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Lauren R. O’Connell.