MaybeItsFate launches with Let’s Start with Beauty
Published December 16th 2024
By Eileen Yanoviak
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, 1818 Glendale Road, 2016, oil on linen.and installation view of MaybeItsFate
In October 2024, artist/entrepreneurs Rebecca Norton and Charley Miller opened the doors to MaybeItsFate, a novel member-owned cooperative social club for artists and creatives. MaybeItsFate is a brave new concept. The mission is ambitious—to grow and sustain a cultural hub for art, conversation, and instigation while generating a new model of support for artists active in local subcultures.
Essentially, the place is a catalyst for the convergence of creative and innovative minds. Coffee between artist friends, yes. Artist collaborations, yes. Discussions, classes, readings, performances—basically, if an artist generated the idea, it is probably possible at MaybeItsFate. If it seems to lack a clear definition of how the space will be used, that is part of the purpose. By virtue of its limitless potential and flexibility, members of the artist community are compelled to be a part of its inception and shaping—and its success can be financially reward members. In addition to member-generated activation and programming, there is exhibition space open to the public that will be member curated.
If we assume that words matter, then the co-op name, MaybeItsFate, and its inaugural exhibition title, Let’s Start With Beauty, are intentionally evasive, evocative, and expansive. The “It” driven by Fate in the organization title is undefined. In the exhibition title, what actually starts with beauty, and who is included? And ultimately, what are the subjective qualities and experiences of beauty? The lack of boundaries and definitions are key to its promise of finding beauty in unexpected connections.
Co-curated by husband-and-wife duo Rebecca Norton and Charley Miller, Let’s Start With Beauty brings together seemingly disparate art forms, from formal painting, installation, and sculpture to game design. Norton muses on the definitions of beauty in her exhibition essay, meandering through philosophical inquiries from Plato to Frank Lantz’s Beauty of Games. She proposes an experiential aesthetic that merges the rational and irrational, the communal and individual, action and emotion, pleasure and pain, the real and unreal.
If beauty is experienced in these contradictory elements, then the seemingly unrelated visual aesthetics of the exhibition make more sense. The exhibition is installed in several rooms throughout the building, including a dedicated gallery space and several small nooks, meeting spaces, and gathering areas. Entering and emerging from these spaces is part of the experience of this immersive setting.
There is a strong presence of non-representational geometric compositions with bold color and clean lines—a beauty informed by a simple austerity of color, form, and shape, as in Chris Cook’s Opposite Triangles (2019) or Christian Haub’s neon cast acrylic Float for Matthew Barry. These works might fall into the rational/irrational beauty suggested by Norton’s essay, at once very controlled (rational) and defying interpretation (irrational.)
Chris Haub "Float for Matthew Barry" Cast Acrylic Sheet 2015 24" x 24" x 2.5"
Through technology by way of projection and gaming, geometric forms are enlivened in the exhibition. On opening night of the exhibition, a temporary projection by Matt Sheridan bridged the gap between non-objective painting and the digital world with a large-scale projection on the exterior of the building. That segues seamlessly to the introduction of game design as the synthesis of experiential aesthetics. A cozy couch in the exhibition space invites participation in Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, a visual that echoes the non-representational art around it. In an art-world increasingly focused on experiential art and interactive experiences, gaming is an underrecognized art-form, and games are arguably a more democratized art form, with vastly more diverse audiences.
There are elements of the natural and organic that balance and complement the geometric formal works. The representational elements of the exhibition, whether nature or figural, add an ethereal element to the exhibition that claim the natural world is the source of beauty. Clare Hirn’s work Don't Let the Beauty Slip Away displays a complex narrative of multiple dimensions or realities that breaks the “third wall” in a cinematic sense—beauty in the real and unreal. The figure in the foreground of the drawing looks back over her shoulder at a lush natural landscape in the background and also thrusts forward in her hand a rich floral painting that is literally another painting affixed to the canvas, implying a yearning for the real by creating the unreal.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
Leah Porter and Susanna Herbert’s mixed media installation Atmosphere is composed of delicately folded paper flowers and shredded paper scattered on the floor. On the wall behind the paper flowers is a dreamy floor length wall ganging. The flowers painted on its warm background look as though they are falling, a little haphazard, attached to streaks of green stems that were placed by chance.
To grapple with the concept of beauty in this setting with these works is an intellectual pursuit. This is not beauty for the sake of beauty, even if the curators state the reasoning for the exhibition is simply that we need more beauty. It is not an easy or trite definition of beauty, nor is it trying to be universal. If beauty is subjective, this is the subjective and personal experience of beauty as seen through the unique lenses of the curators, whose unexpected connections between fine art and games resist traditional notions of beauty.
Because the show finds beauty in unexpected connections, it mirrors the intention of the co-op as a whole. Activated primarily by members, the co-op is a generative space where unexpected connections between creatives are critical to its efficacy. How this takes shape remains to be seen as the organization and its members co-create how the communal space is activated.
Lets Start with Beauty runs through December 21st, with a closing reception on 12/21 from 5-7PM. More information can be found here.