It’s April already. Soon it will be fall again… and then Christmas… and then, soon enough, I’ll be 60… and then dead. My mid-50’s are defined by a heightened awareness of the swift and ceaseless passage of days, the earth seemingly spinning on its access and revolving around the sun faster and faster and faster as I cling to my little corner of it, trying not to be flung into the abyss just yet. Can someone just make it stop?
I’m working on a new project. It’s tentatively called 16:9. The images will be small, maybe postcard size, the resolution 16 x 9 pixels. 16:9 is the aspect ration of widescreen cinema, the medium that has inspired most of my work and framed how I experience the world. The content–or lack of it–is inspired by a renewed affinity with the Dadaists, the meaning of their work derived from its meaninglessness, that meaninglessness shaped by the collapse of their world and the horrors of World War 1. With Republican apathy obstructing any meaningful attempt to prevent the world from overheating and overpopulating, people believing the most preposterous of lies, Putin invading Ukraine and the rest of the world scared to do anything lest their gasoline prices rise, my own days numbered… I’m finding it hard to find meaning in any of this. So I’m making some photos about nothing for my 9th solo show in as many years at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland.
Over these 9 years I’ve spent enough money on printing and framing to buy a small house on an island in the Cyclades, where, frankly, I think I’d rather be right now, tan, fat and bald and spitting watermelon seeds into the Aegean with my Greek fisherman husband. I’ve sold a few pieces over these years, but instead of my island retreat, I have a basement filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with the beautifully framed output from this intensely productive period. So, out of necessity, out of a lack of funds and further storage space, out of despair, out of diminishing faith in my fellow humans, I find solace in meaninglessness.
I consider this body of work to be a gift of sorts to my audience. Let’s forget about my desires, my anxieties, me trying to articulate something of my private experience through a universal visual language. You won’t have to try to figure out what I’m trying to say–whatever you want this work to be about will be what it’s about. Whatever you see is what you’ll be seeing. And whatever will be will be. Que sera, sera.
