NADA X FORELAND // Presenting Jared Hoffman // August 28 - 29, 2021

Open Hours // 11 am - 8 pm EST // 361 Main Street, Catskill NY

Preview Checklist of Available Works

NADA x Foreland

Jared Hoffman

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“If we only understood the word, we would be idol-worshippers” — Adapted from Mahmud Shabestari (Sufi poet of the Mogul dynasty)

Kabbalistic mystics and Sufi poets described a world made more of chaotic backwater than cleanly lit earth. Society, they noted, is a window onto which poets write reality into existence. Where chaos reigns only feasting, dancing and fucking can puncture the thick smog of unanimity. Pagans, minor deities, spirits, ghosts, voodoo-dolls and idols have never left us. Dismiss their powers at your own risk.

In the Biblical story, the newly freed Israelites are alone, impatient and scared while waiting for Yahweh (God) to give Moses a sign in the desert. They want a god now! --and so they fashion a golden calf idol and sing, pray, feast and make sacrifices to it. Yahweh hears about the treachery and punishes the idol-worshippers, killing 3,000 of them; even this punishment, we learn, is a tempered response from a raging God who threatens initially to kill all of them and start again from scratch.

Today, idol-worship has never been easier or idols more abundant. We may not have considered Mickey Mouse a deity, but perhaps we should have. Pepe the Frog got Trump elected. An army of bees so frightened the crown prince of Saudi Arabia that he ordered the murder of Jamal Kashogi in broad daylight. Powerful institutions, from states to corporations, must regularly manage clashes between furious online mobs who rally spontaneously and joyously behind digital idols forged with memes, hashtags and other ephemera. Could the power of pagan gods be re-emerging?

If We Only Understood The Word, We Would Be Idol Worshipers is a sculpture of a translucent, gradient-laden golden calf, draped with digitally-printed textiles comprised of abundant, mediated images of memes, digital culture. Hoffman aims to shine light on this nascent digital spirituality which subverts and complicates the Biblical story’s binary of believers and non-believers.

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NADA x Foreland is a collaborative weekend exhibition to take place August 28–29, 2021 at Foreland — a new arts campus in upstate New York — featuring artwork installed in a historic industrial building in the center of Catskill, New York.

In partnership with Upstate Art Weekend and co-organized with NADA Member Jesse Greenberg of JAG Projects, the exhibition will highlight artworks from the community of NADA galleries, non-profits, and artists with a focus on artists working in the region of Upstate New York, featuring 81 exhibiting galleries, non-profits, and artist-run spaces presenting over 100 artists.