TussleProjects Presents
the time being
curated by Laura Horne
May 5 - July 31, 2021
Featuring:
Dexter Ciprian
Julia Blume
Jack Henry
Brian Zegeer
The time being is an exhibition re-examining the history of artifacts and events – their substance, value, material reality, and instability that they carry.
The relationship between the objects and information creates a message relating to the mythology of our history and identities as a whole. A re-evaluation of man-made objects, objects from nature, and imagined objects plus events that are seemingly out of our control become an accumulation of readymade triggers of our psychological and physical spaces.
Dexter Ciprian
TLRQVALL! I (TIENDE LA ROPA QUE VA A LLOVER!(“hang the clothes before it rains!”)
It was summer some years ago when, across my studio window, I caught a glance of the brown arms of an elderly woman hanging clothes and sheets over her windowsill. I took out my phone and recorded the different fabrics being carried by the wind. It brought to mind images of Abuela in Dominican Republic hanging out sheets to dry in the backyard. I could remember her saying “tiende la ropa que va a llover!” (“hang the clothes before it rains!”), and we would rush to hang clothes on furniture and household objects. Seeing it now in New York City, this mental image seemed to collapse the historical time and geographical distance travelled from the so called third world to the first world. It was dizzying and unsettling.
Julia Blume
OBJECTS FROM THE WILDERNESS
In her work, she breaks down the false dichotomy of “humans” and “nature”, and she considers the political implications of this artificial separation. Symbolic mark making and interactions with place are used as a way to enter into communication with the various entities of the land – from rocks to insects to bobcats to the mycorrhizal networks of forests.
Brian Zegeer
UNEXPECTED SYNCHRONISITIES
Zegeer's photos are cut up and shaped into sculptural objects, snapshots of his family formed into hybrid beasts. He imagines the moments of daily life as material to be mined for unexpected synchronicities, larger shapes of meaning that emerge from the particularities of the play of light upon a wall or the coinciding of two unrelated moments. Patterns appear, predictive models emerge, as in the case of weather forecasts and tide tables in a traditional almanac.
Jack Henry
CAPTURED IN TIME
Henry's work began as a critique on the post-industrial landscape in his hometown and was very much about found objects and abandoned buildings, remnants, seemingly more archaeological than environmental. “But to tell that story is to inadvertently reference pollution, detritus, and environmental disaffection. And I became more concerned with those issues as a result. I want to recreate the majesty of wilderness while showing that it has been corrupted. Maybe still beautiful in a classic sense, but forever changed; plastic, contained, damaged,” Henry explains.