“A shell is a little thing, but I can make it look bigger by replacing it where I found it, on the vast expanse of sand. For if I take a handful of sand and observe what little remains in my hand after most of it has run out between my fingers, if I observe a few grains, then each grain individually, at the moment none of the grains seem small to me any longer and soon the shell itself — this oyster shell or limpet or razor clam — will appear to be an enormous monument, both colossal and intricate like the temples of Angkor, or the church of Saint-Maclou, or the Pyramids, and with a meaning far stranger than these unquestioned works of man.”
— Francis Ponge, 1942

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Winter Street Gallery is pleased to present Double Threshold, a group exhibition examining various scale shifts through acts of doubling, magnifying, shrinking, contextualizing, and reframing. The show explores how choices made within an installation can become staged acts of perception, demonstrating how the relationship between art, space, and viewers transforms and evolves when works are placed in different contexts. Featuring twenty artists spanning multiple generations and mediums, Double Threshold considers over forty works shown across two distinct architectural spaces: on the gallery walls and within a one tenth scaled reproduction of Winter Street Gallery situated within the exhibition.

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The works featured in Double Threshold elicit conversations about art practices and the values and meanings we assign to works at various scales. What constitutes a work as monumental? Artist Barnett Newman argues that “size is nothing: what matters is the scale.” For art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, artworks are measured by their ability to facilitate social interactions and relationships. The poet and critic Susan Stewart questions the significance we attribute to art through the lens of various forms of human desire and longing. One aspect of Stewart’s analysis concerns the miniature and the gigantic as aesthetic categories. She posits that both extremes represent attempts to transcend the limitations of everyday experience: the miniature by condensing reality into a small, manageable form, and the gigantic by overwhelming the viewer with a sense of awe and magnitude. In Double Threshold, these philosophical inquiries find practical application as viewers navigate between the macro and microcosms within the gallery.

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Within the scale model of the gallery, viewers encounter more than a simple reproduction of the larger gallery’s display. Instead, they see a curated selection of artworks arranged to both mimic the scale of the main gallery’s pieces and to magnify smaller works into grandiose proportions. This deliberate manipulation prompts contemplation: do particular nuances of the artworks emerge or fade away when placed in these varying contexts? This exploration engages with the dynamics of perception, inviting viewers to reconsider their presence and interaction with the artworks themselves.