Tight Spaces (Fever) • Installation with Best Dressed Signs at Boston University Gallery Annex • September 2-21, 2014

Design by Josh Luke; Concept by Josh Luke and Meredith Kasabian

For our installation, Tight Spaces, we used the very small space of the Boston University Art Gallery Annex to reproduce an interpretation of the largest sign that we’ve painted to date—the now defunct There’s Never an Off Season sign that spanned the corner of Brookline Ave. and Boylston St. in the Fenway neighborhood for nearly a year. In re-creating this large, public, and highly visible sign inside a small gallery space we aim to confront the viewer by presenting the scope of the lettering in an intimate setting. The theme of confrontation is expanded upon by the bright colors, reversed lettering, and the accompanying video, in which we engage the viewer with an abstracted audio/visual incursion of live punk music.

The word FEVER, painted in clean, crisp lettering in vivid hues of blue, pink, orange, and yellow, connotes contagion, whether negatively, in the form of an illness or plague, or positively, through a sense of enthusiasm and excitement. The mirrored letters on the right hand wall express the duality of this term, placing the viewer in the open gallery space between the “correct” orientation of the lettering and its opposite. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer becomes encompassed by the installation and now effectively exists inside the action of reflection, where the clear binary between positive and negative makes its transition.

The dichotomous natures of reflection and confrontation are further explored through the audio/visual component of the installation. The compulsion to engage with the sometimes cacophonous and often chaotic experience of live punk rock music aids in the challenge of existing within the conceptual transitional space, where being in-between can be uncomfortable, jarring, and anarchic, but also transformational. It is in this space where binaries are deconstructed and perspectives change.

We'd like to extend a very special thanks to Kenji Nakayama, Corinna D’Schoto, Martina Benassi, and Sophie Greenspan for helping bring the mural to life!