I hope this finds you well

Whatever arrives in a letter or a package sent by a friend or a loved one, arrives first as a caring gesture. It is what envelopes the actual message and the entrusted things inside which carry and mediate experiences, memories, and understandings across time and space.

Initiated and organized by Lamar Dodd School of Art MFA Candidate Paul Knopf, I hope this finds you well  is an ongoing process of exploring what it means to engage about, with, and through art across distances. Friendship and companionship in spirit were the prerequisite for a series of conversations that happened between the artists David Frommhold, Hein Henkel, Paul Knopf and Till Röttjer who were dispersed at varying times and constellations across the US, Iceland, Austria, and Germany. Utilizing old and proven ways of transmitting materials and messages as well as using contemporary communication technologies and collaboration software, the artworks for this exhibition emerged from this shared journey of caring for each other, and transatlantically entrusting moments and messages to each other.

While they have been sent back and forth and back again both digitally and physically, separation, distance, time, resources, access, and regulations transformed the process of art making, and co-shaped the artworks themselves. Thus, interferences along the way have become an integral part of their genesis and inscribed into the artworks as resonances. Through this, the exhibition becomes a time capsule as well as an exploration of contemporary communications and remote sensing to mediate between different realities while preserving what matters most: the act of working together.

The artists invite you to ask to whom you would send something, and what it would be that you would entrust to the world and to the forces that carry it, so that, upon letting it go, you could whisper:

I hope this finds you well.

On site programming will be announced via posters at the Lamar Dodd School of Art or can be obtained by contacting any of the exhibiting artists. Mostly online, it will consist of inputs and collective workshops and artistic collaboration. To schedule individual tours or for further questions please send an email to Paul Knopf: paul.knopf@uga.edu

For more information, contact Rachel Waldrop, Director and Curator, Dodd Galleries and Atheneum: rachel.waldrop@uga.edu. The Dodd Galleries are open M-Fri in the main Lamar Dodd School of Art building, from 9am-4:30pm. The Lamar Dodd School of Art is closed on weekends, University holidays, and home football game days. See art.uga.edu for more information.

I Hope This Finds You Well is supported by UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and The Lamar Dodd School of Art, with the Lupin Endowment Fund. For support opportunities, contact Lynh Tran, Development Associate: lynh.tran@uga.edu