More than the sum of their parts…
As the ICA collection continues to grow, potential connections with our exhibitions expand even further. Highlighting the museum’s latest acquisitions, this new installation takes the significance of such growth as its theme: Accumulations presents works that assemble, amass, and overlap multiple parts to create resonant combinations and associations.
From the hundreds of charred scraps in Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson) to the thousands of silver straight pins making up Tara Donovan’s Untitled (Pins), several artists in the ICA collection multiply physical quantities with resonant qualities.
Other works overlap the conceptual with the everyday to evoke new meanings. James and Audrey Foster Prize artists Rachel Perry Welty and Kelly Sherman gather and sequence strangers’ phone messages and wish lists, imbuing them with a powerful sense of both the personal and communal. Works by Ambreen Butt, Paul Chan, and Rineke Dijkstra present figures in situations of flux that hint at outcomes unknown or unknowable.
Accumulations explores how artists’ works, in layering both concrete materials and poignant references, provoke our perceptions, expectations, and emotions.