-Douglas Adams, author
What is it about airports? They can be a places of excitement and anxiety, inspiration and frustration. A mixed bag of emotions, as well as a mix of people and cultures traverse through their doors every day. We live in a time when people can travel the world with relative ease, be it for business, family or vacation. The airport is now a central, cultural hub, a welcome mat for those arriving to a city, a waiting room for those who are leaving.
In every city, a new airport is a new experience. No two look or feel the same, but at their cores perhaps they are not all that different. You will see people sprawled out in the lobby. Some make last minute phone calls before boarding a plane. Others search out empty electrical sockets to power their laptops. Some sit patiently, reading newspapers, while others may be found catching up on some much needed sleep after a long delayed flight. We can watch as those traveling alone, in groups of friends, or as families with kids, wait in long lines at security gates, glide down corridors on motorized walkways, shop at assorted kiosks, race to their gates with baggage in tow, or stand attempting to make sense of the arrival/departure monitors. It is a kind of chaos, yes there is something inherently captivating about airports. Is it a sense of the airport as a microcosm of the world in which we now live? Do airports embody the collective hopes, desires and fears we have for this world? Does air travel fulfill a primitive human desire to fly or perhaps expose our need to be nomadic?
With the ever growing trend to design and construct new airports, complete with food courts, stores, and even pubic art, perhaps we no longer view airports in the same way Douglas Adams did. This exhibition brings together four American based artists, each of whom has engaged and explored many of these universal questions, as well as their own, centered on both airports and air travel. Be it an interest in airports, planes, travel, the human condition, global politics, or simply an interest in the gathering places of people, these artists have found inspiration, something "pretty", something intellectually appealing in and around the world´s airports. Through the images presented by these four artists, perhaps we may glean a new appreciation, a new respect for all things related to these airports, the jets coming and going or the millions of diverse travelers passing through. This is perhaps the role of all art, to show us all, those things right before our eyes that we fail to see on our own.
Text by Scott Grow.
Artisti/Curator.
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