13 September to 27 October, 2012 Please join us for the opening on Thursday, 13 September from 7 to 9 p.m. Buecking’s ongoing examination of the North American social fabric continues in WE THING, an installation comprised of architectural, sculptural, and video components. Here, she attempts to reify and enact the effects of neoliberalism, a system that is largely indefinable yet dominates our primary understanding of reality. In WE THING, Buecking establishes the kernel of neoliberalism’s alienation within lifestyle marketing and the Human Potential Movement—a self-styled category of motivational seminars and affiliated material aimed at self-actualization and personal advancement—using an assembled collection of props and set pieces distilled from these vocabularies. As illustrations and caricatures of this system, objects such as a Platonic tetrahedron, a giant Gap shopping bag, and carpeted display furniture become props in her videotaped performances. There, Buecking’s deliberately failed interactions with these components reinforce their futility. This “tragic absurdity” echoes elsewhere in WE THING through Buecking’s use of the tried-and-true lightbulb joke—a template-based form of lowbrow humour and social critique that can be applied to any group in a derogatory way—to explore the power dynamics and ethics of the current system. As Buecking writes, "Humour tries to make more tangible the distance between abstract models and the suppleness of reality, and to provisionally articulate that distance in a more humane way." For more information please contact the gallery or visit our website.
follow us on Susan Hobbs Gallery 137 Tecumseth Street Toronto, Canada M6J 2H2 telephone: 416 504 3699 facsimile: 416 504 8064 www.susanhobbs.com

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