Important Projects, a fantastic home galleryspace located in Rockridge, presents solo shows for Aurora Crispin and Diego Leclery, both of which focus on the ideas and implications surrounding representation or re-presentation of objects, and the multitude and strength of meanings objects have the capcity to contain.

Aurora Crispin’s “A Selection of Everything” is the artist’s first exhibition at Important Projects. The sample of photographs are taken from a project she began in 2005 to create an archive of every object in her possession. Crispin’s stunning works of such disparate objects like wigs, hair acessories, and kitchen tools come together as a collection of works because they represent the same intended meaning. The objects are also illustrative of the artist’s own inspection into the representation of herself, ingeniously blurring the lines between the perceptions of “the artist” and person. 

Diego Leclery’s “Words” aims to collapse two often conflicting  systems of representation by a clever yet simple juxtaposition and re-presentation of words and objects. The exhibition consists of a series of new works that highlight and re-structure the complexities of perception. One exceptional work by Leclery is “Prisoners” in which the artist pairs seminal works by Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf” and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” At first these two legendary persons could not be more different. However by these literary works shown together the artist makes us somewhat uncomfortably aware of their similarity, both having been written during the time of the author’s incarceration. Rather than evince a reformation that prisons aim to accomplish, both objects are representative  of the strengthened resolve of the prisoner’s beliefs: one, full of a positivity and intelligence, and the other full of hatred and omen of such to come. The unsuggestive ambiguous title of the exhibition, “Words” also creatively suggests exactly what these two works accomplish. Words like objects simply exist of themselves, but by a combination they become greater than a sum of its parts and create emotional value. 

Works by Aurora Crispin and Diego Leclery are on view at Important Projects Wednesdays 4-8pm and by appointment until February 25, 2012.