Seattle-based performance group Implied Violence (IV) has gained international attention with their ambitious multimedia works. Co-founded in 2004 by Ryan Mitchell and Mandie O’Connell, IV incorporates a shifting roster of visual artists, musicians, actors, dancers, choreographers and sound artists. The group’s oblique narratives explore such themes as the ecstatic states brought on by extreme means. This first museum exhibition for the group will include video and photo documentation of selected past performances, as well as sculptures, costumes, props and masks.

The exhibition will open with a new performance work entitled The Dorothy K: For Better, For Worse, and Forever, specifically created for the Frye Art Museum's reflecting pools site. For the performance, an archer will shoot 20 home-made wooden arrows into a sculpture crafted of paraffin wax every hour on the hour.

Set in the water of the reflecting pools, the day-long event also includes monumental kinetic sculptures and various supporting performers executing slow and silent movements. The arrow-filled target is intended to become part of the exhibition when it is ceremoniously taken from the pool at the conclusion and carried into the Museum. In the exhibition context, objects used as props for the performance shift status to become relics.

In 2009, IV was invited to present The Dorothy K. in the New Island Festival, Governor’s Island, New York. They collaborated with the Parenthetical Girls, a Portland-based band known for creating multilayered orchestral pop songs. Most recently, the collaborators presented The Dorothy K at donaufestival 2010, a prestigious Austrian international arts event.

Allyn Cantor