From the Great Rivers Biennial trifecta, Cameron Fuller’s exhibition is comparable to a musical composition based upon familiar tunes. Combining basic melodies of recollection, wanderlust and adventure, the exhibition rekindles the juvenescent enchantment of the natural world. Creating a museum within a museum, Fuller’s exhibition – video, diorama, photography, and installation – brings the viewer into a world beyond the Contemporary and into the fantasias of imagination.

The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes is assembled from Fuller’s virtuosity of set design, taking cues from theater production to create moments of static cinema. Entering into Fuller’s Institute, the exhibition begins with a contemporary, sci-fi slab of the natural world. Titled As it is, this full-scale diorama displays taxidermy forest animals inhabiting their portion of an astro-turfed earth, roaming at ease under the cover of a starry and geodesic sky. What, at first, may seem akin to the tradition of a natural history museum, is Fuller re-appropriating the conventions of historicizing presentation. Creating this fantastical version of the natural world, Fuller causes the audience to conjure up a story of their own. As it is revives the notion of the frontier, claiming its existence within our own imaginations.

Through the templates of diorama and performance, Fuller aims to preserve the storytelling apparatus, creating a platform for its preservation and transformation. His technique facilitates a self-analytical, self-historicizing reaction – where we can see ourselves more readily from the outside, to realize the ways in which we define our world, the interconnectedness of our ideas, and ways we relate to one another. The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes is on view at the Contemporary until its closing date August 8, 2010. Come by and visit The Institute.

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