Uniform
Uniform
In their inaugural exhibition the figurative artist collective Phantoms in the Front Yard presented the work of Chad Krowchuk, Jay Senetchko, Jeremy Birnbaum, Jordan Bent, Marcus Macleod and Morgan Jeske. Uniform addresses the everyday socially constructed masks or uniforms donned to maintain societal norms and a collective order/unity. The narrative running through each piece conveys an umbilicus barely binding us as a civilization to reality, and to one another, in the midst of power structures continually working to maintain or destroy them.
For his contribution to the exhibition, Senetchko drew on his background as a professional soccer player and Commerce graduate, and the high degree of uniformity present in team sports and large organizational systems. While it is intuitive to think of teams and organizations comprised of individuals, they are abstractly organized within a collective whole with which they share a symbiotic relationship.
The uniform of the office or field attempts to homogenize the destabilizing influence of the individual, just as the individual attempts to maintain autonomy within those environments. The influence of the individual stresses the functionality of any system, and the rigidity of systemization places stress on individuals. Both forms of stress potentially lead to exhaustion or collapse.
