The Golden Colonel

Flux Factory

July 12-August 11

Colonels Row - Colonels Row - Building 404A

As part of its fourth sea­son­al res­i­den­cy on Gov­er­nors Island, Flux Fac­to­ry presents group exhi­bi­tion The Gold­en Colonel, a spec­u­la­tive retire­ment home for artists.

Curat­ed by artists Heather Kap­plow and Ita­la Aguil­era, with assis­tance from Shi­nobu Aki­mo­to, co-direc­tor of Res­i­den­cy for Artists on Hia­tus, The Gold­en Colonel fea­tures works in all the medi­ums by John Allen, Syd­ni Ann Bak­er, Mar­garet Bel­lafiore, Noémie Jen­nifer Bon­net, Ben Gal­a­day, Car­rie Hawks, Li-Ming Hu, Shushanik Kara­petyan, Alix Lam­bert (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ita­la Aguil­era), Mar­cel Mar­cel, Nan­cy Nowacek, Moses Ros, Mark Shaw, Walk­er Tufts, Yolan­da He Yang, Sil­vana Zuanet­ti, and an anony­mous sub­mit­ter using the moniker ​“Old­er Artist.”

There is an unspo­ken under­stand­ing that because being an artist is not a ​“real” job, but some­thing more like a call­ing, and because artists often don’t earn enough mon­ey to save for old age, they can’t retire. They just make art until they die. The Gold­en Colonel explores some of the com­plex­i­ties of artists con­sid­er­ing the same choice to retire from their prac­tices as every­one else.

Most peo­ple wait until they retire to explore their cre­ativ­i­ty. The Gold­en Colonel is a place for peo­ple who have already done that. So what comes next? Flux Fac­to­ry has gath­ered work by artists rang­ing in age from their ear­ly 20s to their ear­ly 80s to reflect on what might lie beyond art­mak­ing, or whether it’s even pos­si­ble to stop mak­ing art.

Flux Fac­to­ry is one of the 2024 Gov­er­nors Island Arts Orga­ni­za­tions in Res­i­dence.