Wondermare :: July 8 - August 8, 2009 :: Scene One: July 8, 6-8 pm :: apexart, 291 Church Street, NYC.

Be part of the cast in an interactive film epic where expectations are challenged and realities are remade. Wondermare is based on the notion that much of the behavioral conditioning programmed in our subconscious is the unhealthy byproduct of a world out of balance, a “house of cards” on the brink of catastrophe; the truth of which is obscured from us by our own myopic pursuits and illusions.

The exhibition uses as its setting the story of Alice in Wonderland precisely because it contains anecdotes about the rites of passage into adulthood. The tale consistently resists an easily defined linear structure and at the same time confronts the confusing and often nonsensical rituals that we must travel through in order to obtain a civilized or adult persona in the world we see through our looking glass.

Wondermare will seek to unravel these narrative notions by asking you, the gallery visitor, to become a participant in your own story. We ask you to “pick a card,” and answer a question against a live camera in front of a green screen. The green screen will allow us, in a final edit, to place you anywhere and against any backdrop. The narrative of the story will no longer stay fixed and instead a new plot will be enabled as you become the star and a new film emerges from each interaction.

As you become part of this video installation, Wondermare will ask you to reexamine and redefine your relationship to the world and the stories you have spun, internally and externally. Immersed in an eight-screen video landscape, you will feel compelled to address the parts of yourself that are hidden, repressed and denied. As an interactive exhibition, the show creates the opportunity for a psychological rebooting or do over, where you will have another chance at addressing your own rights of cultural passage that you may or may not have gotten right the first time around.

It is time to fall down a rabbit hole, to play a new role and forge a commitment to a different reality.

Welcome to Wondermare.

Participating Artists: Sophy Bot, Ken Cypert, Sean Dineen, Tegan Flanders, Mimi Fontana & Manhattan Tribal, Adrian Harpham, The Highline Erotic Arts Gallery & their beautiful team, Natali Jones, SH Lace, Vivien Lewit, Kelly Lincoln, Ian Phillips, Alberto Pinto, Charlie Reis, Joseph Teichman, Ronny Wasserstrom, Martha Williams (The Movement Movement), Dred Williams.

Curated by Susan McIntosh and Albert Wilking

Special thank you to Rick Raguso who put countless hours into making Wondermare a reality, and Phyllis Bickham, for her tireless camera work and enthusiasm.