November 6 - December 6, 2014

Opening + Artist Talk: Thursday, November 6, 5 - 7 p.m.

Richmond, VA - 1708 Gallery is pleased to present The Bottom Needs A Shadow, a collaborative installation that combines the artistic practices of artists Alexander Hayden, Aaron Koehn, and Thomas Burkett. By using interventions with ready-made objects and appropriations from various locations in Richmond (including river water and a catfish), The Bottom Needs a Shadow brings together objects to address ideas concerning the adaptive life of a city, an economy, a geography, a body of water, and a species. Please join us for the opening and artist talk on Thursday, November 6.

The artists refer to the overlapping connections between environment, culture, and economy - themes that find themselves expanded upon throughout each element of the installation.

“The catfish, a digester of cultural waste, burrows itself in the sediment of river beds and metabolizes refuse. A highly adaptive species has found it’s home in a disquiet body of water. On any given Sunday in Richmond, you can hear the barks of these 55 lb ray-finned fish as they get reeled onto the banks of the James. The same weight Kim Kardashian shed in 15 months lands itself on slips that were once filled with the mass activity of imports and exports of a city; the reeler celebrates to this sport.”

The Bottom Needs A Shadow asks if the gallery can become a host, an ecological incubator, and a conductor of energy. In this shadowed place of refuge the exhibition aims to provide a celebratory lyric to the geography we stand on and inhabit.

Burkett, Hayden, and Koehn met while attending graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University. Their practices naturally found conceptual overlap during their studies, however The Bottom Needs A Shadow marks their first truly collaborative endeavor.

To learn more about the artists please visit their websites

Alexander Hayden www.vimeo.com/alexanderhayden

Aaron Koehn www.aaronkoehn.com

Thomas Burkett www.thomasburkett.com

The Bottom Needs A Shadow is sponsored in part by Integrated Power Sources of Virginia, Fountainhead Properties, and Binswanger Glass Co.