In seven installations comprised of sculpture, handmade books, handmade paper, and delicate kilnformed works, Correspondence explored the myriad relationships that are created and severed between language and objects.

~

“How does language relate to objects? Can there be a language of objects? What happens when there are no words? What if the objects and the words used to describe them both disappear?

My father is a philosopher and is slowly losing his memory. Correspondence reflects this nebulous state: objects coming into and out of focus, words somewhat discernible, the shadows and loss of language. each room reflects a different relation of language to objects: pages with their words completely gone, reading rooms, walls of text.

The show is structured so that images repeat in various forms: the bulb in the text of “errata” appears in the installation of burned letters; each set of artists’ books depicts an inverted version of the installation opposite. Both “relict” and “redacted” include an image of a burned piece of paper from September 11th; which is then echoed in the actual burned letters beneath the light bulb; the image of a string that ties together an envelope and an explosion in “epistolary” is echoed in the strings linking the boards and darkened cards in the site-specific installation.

These visual echoes are meant to evoke how memory changes and parses information, and how the same story shifts and evolves through repetition. The mixed media installation “metaphysics” is based on the Aristotle writing of the same name. The “real” wood knots are coated in graphite and displayed with their cast glass counterparts. The wood versions are meant to suggest the shadow versions of the glass, to be a non-verbal form of writing. The wood pieces are objects my father sent me, which I then made molds of and cast.

The paper installation “residual” is also another variation of a correspondence- each piece was made by creating two sheets of paper, one of which was then predominantly washed away. These two pieces were then sandwiched together to create a joined memory. The imagery was created by placing found objects on top of paper pulp, and then using water to wash away the pulp around the objects. Cumulatively they are meant to suggest a wall of disappearing text or an alternate form of language.

Both “Circulation” and “redacted” include bars or bands that are blocking out a portion of the image, many of the works also include a series of lines suggestive of lines in a notebook waiting for writing.

The plexiglass installation “Errata” is meant to suggest a memorial and is about my own errors and misremembrances. Both this piece and the burned letter installation are my reflection on my own possible loss of memory; the installation creates a space to contemplate that, while “errata” shows you yourself reading the list of errors in its reflective surface.”

INSTALLATION IMAGES

EXHIBITION VIEWS

INDIVIDUAL WORKS