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| 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
