Text for solo exhibition Off Hours at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY
OFF HOURS
Is it true that anything can be changed, seen in any light, and is not destroyed by the action of shadows? Then you won’t mind when I interrupt you while you’re working?
–John Cage
Sea change. What happens to the ear at eye level? Having distanced ourselves from boredom, no longer seeking horizon, street or an idle face across a table, we are perpetually receptive. But to what? Before climbing to an altitude where all direction was lost, before drifting out from shore, before the rhythmic descent (having swallowed those four red seeds)—before all of this, Kore sat at the river’s edge and became very still, staring at her reflection in Narcissus.
Eventually we gave it a name (abduction, seduction, to be led astray, Stockholm) but before all of this, before she was stolen into and below the earth—Kore raised her eyes (the ear at eye level) to meet her own face reflected in the pupil of Hades. She was gone already.
And so the image seeks a body—not an imprint, not transference—a body that can be seen in any light, beauty at low temperature. A device lights up one side of the face only, that which is turned towards it. A device is not older than we are. So we have to stay, pursuing an image, in the off hours.
