Devin T. Mays

Devin T. Mays takes his time. His willingness to slowly develop an understanding of what becomes art allows the work to feel quite expansive and yet so precise. He surrenders to an unknown, thereby enhancing the clarity of his intuition. Mays’ practice requires a delicate negotiation of intervention — as if he doesn’t want to interfere with the process of a thing becoming a Thing. Central to this exhibition will be Mays’ ongoing work, Notations, described by the artist as a state of consciousness that began with an accumulation of encounters on the street. As with much of his work, accumulating the materials that constitute Notations wasn’t intended to supply the manufacturing of an artwork. According to Mays, such intent forces his work to arrive either too late or too soon, dislodging it from the places he trusts the most: those in-between. This fluid relationship between time and labor results in Mays’ exhibitions functioning as opportunities to contend with occasional emergences from a preexisting and ongoing continuum of experiences. As such, his work offers an alternative to the anxious drive toward the completion and delivery of results that clearly express their value through a visible totality. It’s an approach that empowers both the artist and the viewer to reconsider how time gets spent, how work gets done, and what we choose to do with things.

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