Tuesday, October 31, 2017

ELASTIC GARAGE at UTSA's ArtSpace

     This is one of the most personal exhibits I've made, with all the bittersweet references to childhood. I came rarely to see the installation, and wait till the last moment to film it, which I'm doing only the last few days of its existence. Because this is such a strong part of my past which is gone and which I miss so much, it was hard to bring myself to revisit the space. And now I have regrets.

Entrance to the exhibit


     I just finished the film this Halloween night, and it is now posted on vimeo:
     Click to see the film here.

   Description of the exhibit:

     “The Elastic Garage”
     Shown at ArtSpace, UTSA, University of Texas at San Antonio
     August - October, 2017. Opening: Aug 24 at 1 pm SLT.    

     Sometimes magic is elusive. In the dark, in a large crowded storage space with one hanging light bulb: the realm of shadows and highlights, everything is sculpted of wonder. A broken down car dreams of the morning sky. An old-fashioned white porcelain bathtub with rusted scars, broken furniture, a collection of rocks in little cloth bags hanging from a beam, yellowing slides and photos from the old days stowed in a corroded file cabinet where I saw my father naked -for the first time- in a fishing trip photo, a film of a long ago vacation when everyone was much younger than I suspected they ever could be, slides telling the story of how the Earth came to be, tools, ancient electronics, the air tempered with repeated phrases of Prokofiev that my mother is practicing on the piano in the distant living room, paints, a broken English screen with peopled scenes on it, the multi-colored bicycle my father painted for me, account for some of the treasures. All of these things are at my service in the secret hours when no one sees me enter here. When the garage door is open during the day, the whole space is deceptively flooded by light, but it still harbors reckless shadows ready to trip me at any moment. The dark spaces are dangerous with plentiful sharp objects and ideal nesting for waiting spiders. I am not supposed to be in this cavern of Ali Baba. Sweet and sour odors accompany the light from the luscious garden just steps away, under my feet.

     This was the garage of my childhood, where my visits were frequent in search of all manner of treasures to furnish the little cities I was building in the garden. Whatever I built from the material felt real, and authentic. The face I cut out of the decomposing, antique screen was, for me, the Mona Lisa. A city of twigs, broken brick and mud domes dripping with poster paint design was the passport to the most exciting places in the world. Contrast has its destined way of entering a child’s world. As my life began to crumble and change faster than anything or anyone could repair it, when daylight shared its chilled light with midnight, the garden and the resources of the garage remained, and refused to diminish their yield.

     Decades pass. I still carry the garage with me. Sometimes its size is elusive.
    
     My friend Lilia Artis gave me very valuable feedback as I was working on this exhibit. I have much to thank her for, and to the curator, constructivIST Solo for having so generously invited me to exhibit, and for tolerating my every question with a smile.
    
     Haveit Neox

     Aug 22, 2017






XXX

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