BUTCHER GALLERY presents Search Prone, an exhibition of work by Sara Cwynar (Toronto), Taras Hrabowsky (New York), Jimmy Limit (Toronto), and Abby McGuane (Toronto).

As a result of monstrous access to archives, news, and moment-by-moment updates of each others lives, the act of searching has been elevated to a second nature affair. To search is to indulge in a strong human instinct that has evolved beyond existential or physical adventure for discovery. Now that universal memory sits, sift-able, at our figure tips, we can search forever without moving. The kind of searching we do while sitting still is so ordinary and so imperative to everyday operation that multinational corporations like Google form from the demand.

Duncan MacKenzie, multi-platform Artist, Critic, and founding member and Producer of Bad at Sports Podcast, spoke recently about ‘kicking the ball further’ in a discussion of the progression of art: “Our art world looks more and more like colonialists, as we reach out to more and more other disciplines and we see the rise of bio-art and we see the rise of social art and we see the rise of artist as scientist and we see the rise of artist looking to colonize fields that are not the traditional purview of picture and object makers.” Search Prone addresses the future of art making within the cultural minefield of speedy lost, then found, sentiments in which they were created.

(Kaitlin Till-Landry 2010)