An Infinite Loop in the Virtual Plaza
Sophia Oppel
October 5 - October 27, 2019
@
Crutch
13 Mansfield Avenue, Unit G
Toronto, ON M6J 2A9
renovation project
a machine for living in
a functionality that eases
sliding seamlessly into the production line;
pore-less and slick like glossed marble.
hands co-opted for consumption manicured nails swiping across manicured screens
knuckle centipedes, erasing the fingerprints of power
new vocabularies of entrepreneurial practice
unprecedented inevitability
softly, manifest destiny
in
rhetorics of training
and weaponized consumption
fused with the words on a screen
felt closely, intimately
my body is a neoliberal renovation project
smooth all my jagged edges?
aching and vacuous
walking horribly, set of crutches fused skeletal legs
and
arms elongated with acrylic joints
i had already metabolized the glossy white-tiled-strangeness
the narratives of improvement
making skin glossy and clear like the reflection on a screen
dulled to an emotional purgatory
screens flicker cold smiles and rubbery hands
clone stamped-nostrils, blue tinted teeth
too much Gatorade
vast, expansive networks; coercion, softly
optimizable and productive fantasies
in well-lit plazas
confronted with an endless void of vacuous white plains,
the stifling promise of infinite choice
blame slides off these surfaces
like oil on water
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Sophia Oppel is an artist and researcher born and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Oppel’s work addresses the insidious positions of embedded power in networked infrastructures, and its manifestations in embodied experience. Oppel received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from OCAD University and is a Master of Visual Studies candidate at the University of Toronto. Oppel is currently co-director of Bunker 2 Gallery and a Curatorial Project Assistant at Gallery 44. Oppel has exhibited locally and internationally at InterAccess, Queen Specific, Gallery TPW, Forest City Gallery, and Xpace Cultural Center.
