Louisville Visual Art
Online Exhibition
August 3 - 7, 2016

Memories are malleable, nebulous, vulnerable and impressionable. They are neither finite nor concrete. Nor are they necessarily accessible at any given moment -only activated by stimulating our brains with just the right cues. A smell, a sound, a touch, or the way the light hits an object in a certain way can all serve as catalysts for recollection. Almost always, these flashbacks summon visualizations – a re-picturing in your mind of your experiences.

But can these external stimuli also be subconsciously manipulative? Occurring in such a way that not only elicits a memory, but also alters it? Or fabricates it altogether? Sensory prompts can generate notions of false familiarity – convincing us we are able to recollect something of which we have no actual remembrance.

Each of the artists included here employ a different mode of recall to provoke the viewer’s memory. While artists often choose to explore memory in an autobiographical manner, those represented here ambiguously withhold the details of their personal narratives. In the absence of the artist’s memories we are left to insert our own, whether or not they are rooted in reality.

Patrick Donely- Associative Memory
Teri Dryden- Involuntary Memory
John Brooks- Flashbulb Memory
Ehren Reed- Reconstructive Memory
Sunny Ra- Recovered Memory