An Unreasonable Commitment to the Square

Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 13 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Kelsey Barton’s “An Unreasonable Commitment to the Square” opens for viewing Monday, October 12 through Friday, October 23.

“I have become unreasonably committed to the square.

“The square is rigid, predictable, and ordinary. Squares are the units that make up our civilizations. Through repetition and accumulation, however, they can become something less stable: geological, bodily, architectural, ornamental, or ambiguously familiar. My preoccupation with the square has led me to explore its potential as both an individual unit and a means of constructing larger forms.

“Working with an aggregation of small units allows low-risk decisions to accumulate into something more consequential. A single square requires little commitment, but hundreds of them can produce a structure that is difficult to ignore or undo. Through this accumulation, I can build complexity from a series of simple decisions, allowing the scale and weight of the whole to emerge gradually from its parts.

“The nature of clay further complicates the apparent rigidity of the square. Its malleability, warping, surface variation, and unpredictability during firing allow something intentionally precise to be altered in ways that are both controlled and beyond my control. I am interested in what happens when a simple form is repeated to an unreasonable degree—when repetition becomes excess, and a constraint becomes generative” (Barton, 2026).