For our second show here at Alterspace, we invited three artists who have created works that elaborate on the notion of normal science. The term "normal science" describes periods of research when scientists experiment with established conventions and historically accepted ideas to progress sytematically, but in unorthodox and deconstructive methods. This scientific concept informs these artists concepts while describing their methods of visual experimentation. The work exhibited by Carl J. Matherne and Flowers [a collaborative duo made up of Brendan Missett and Ben Driggs], addresses issues concerning the roles these artists play in contemporary culture. It is largely intuitive, and simultaneously an outward expression of a variety of fragmented ideas, leaving much to the viewer's imagination. Exploring the image, the object and the place, the artists have navigated through the girth of context and history, to arrive at and inevitably embrace surface; a system of images and signifiers that define visual culture and represents its evolution. Normal science itself involves a sort of movement nowhere but possibly inward, and Carl Matherne has chosen to literalize this by moving into Alterspace. He has brought along with him an assembled and objectified identity by making works that push towards and fashion a certain set of appropriated likenesses. Flowers, in a similar fashion, have chosen to grow up at Alterspace, by materializing and installing their work here in an intuitive site-specific manner. The duo, mostly concerned with whimsy, the superficial, meaninglessness, and pop culture, have created large wall paintings, sculptures out of "store bought" materials, and have induced a colorful and vibrant atmosphere in the gallery. Utilizing the idea of 'surface' and superficiality in both wall and canvas paintings, Flowers acknowledges the decay of authorship and embraces it in both their collaborative practice and their overtly referential content. Conclusively, Normal science is a show that brings together three artists whose work all pertains to the awareness, and re-use of visual and cultural imagery. The artists all investigate methods of image making and image viewing while in the grand scheme of things, manifesting work that exists temporally within the spaces of Normal Science and Alterspace.