The Tiveys: Looks, Sounds, Smells Like the Universe

March 15 – April 27, 2019

Opening reception and performances, 6–9 PM, Friday, March 15

REAL TINSEL is pleased to present this exhibition of a father and his sons. The Tiveys are Hap, Quinn and Rhys, and they are exploring time and the universe through a multi-disciplinary installation of smells, sounds, and visual arts. 

The show feeds off the work “Endless Events” a scroll from the “Origins Project” which maps the universe’s scale from the smallest possible space/time dimension of energy/matter (1.6 x e-32 mm) to the largest known scale of a discreet region of galaxy clusters (8.8 x e+29 mm). Somewhere near the center lies the scale of our physical body inhabited and defined by human consciousness.

(time span roughly 13.8 billion years)

Along this concatenation of endless events, cultures have risen, transformed and vanished leaving occasional traces of their effort to evolve. The small scroll from Beijing records remaining occupied homes scheduled for demolition along Chang’an Avenue just outside the Forbidden City and adjacent to the Beijing Ancient Astronomy Observatory created for the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Originally these dwellings were built for loyal party members during the height of Mao’s Beijing reconstruction. The characters include warnings that these homes will be demolished (character for “destroy”) with finality (character for “iron”. 

(time span roughly six hundred years)

Sesshu created the ink paintings copied onto the “Origin Project” and the Beijing scroll, during the construction of the BAAO and its early pretelescopic function as prophetic augury requested by the Ming Emperor. The Chelsea Scroll records surfaces employed by artists and advertisers, which Chelsea’s aesthetic gentrification has subsequently demolished with finality. (time span roughly 16 years)  

And continuing to the immediate present in this show, a relational component of granular interaction with the community features Rhys Tivey working in the space of the gallery with both recorded sound playback and select solo performances incorporating input from the community. That performance/project will infuse sonically manipulated and looped voices, trumpet, synths, drones, and found-sounds, as intermingled with audio samplings of the Tivey’s voices as they discuss quantum physics, the Universe, and the human mind…ultimately bringing the infinite expanse into the intimate space of interpersonal revelation.

Hap, father to Quinn and Rhys, is a New York based artist, whose work has appeared in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Guggenheim and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. for the last half-century, Hap has manifested a lot of his dubious conclusions about light, art and the meaning of this universe. 

Quinn has an art practice that has grown out of traditional photographic-based work, to utilize photo-sculpture hybrids, stereoscopic imagery, digital image fabrication, and sculptural-based installation. 

Brooklyn based, Rhys is a multidisciplinary singer, trumpeter, songwriter, producer, and movement artist.