ICONS & MONUMENTS Aug 1-Dec 1, 2014
by Guest Artist Nora Belal
This exhibition is as much and exploration of concept as it is material. Artificial flowers and salt, two ends of a spectrum, or maybe more of a venn diagram. The Flowers: imitators of life in a relentless and static play. A stand in for life that despite its garish and unconvincing demeanor asks that you consider it a worthy stand in, and often we do. The Salt too is unchanging but in a more subtle way. Salt is a building block, a nurturer also capable of incredible preservation or destruction.
The frame for these two materials is a marriage of their primary conceptual importance. This frame or glue, or bridge, or connection, is simply: rope. I’m attracted to using rope in the work because it is tough, it is organic, and violent and safe. There are seems and strands that alone are weak, and together are very nearly indestructible. It is a bridge, a trap and a release.
I’m interested in paths and transitions, in icons and monuments and the way we say the things we either don’t know how to or didn’t know we needed to say. The intersection of the materials are bound in my mind and personal narrative but I hope their presence doesn’t beg for an explanation from me, one always hopes that a work will speak for itself, and not always say the same thing to every viewer. The work will be exposed for 3 months to the weather and will document the transition of shape and form of each piece.
This exhibition is as much and exploration of concept as it is material. Artificial flowers and salt, two ends of a spectrum, or maybe more of a venn diagram. The Flowers: imitators of life in a relentless and static play. A stand in for life that despite its garish and unconvincing demeanor asks that you consider it a worthy stand in, and often we do. The Salt too is unchanging but in a more subtle way. Salt is a building block, a nurturer also capable of incredible preservation or destruction.
The frame for these two materials is a marriage of their primary conceptual importance. This frame or glue, or bridge, or connection, is simply: rope. I’m attracted to using rope in the work because it is tough, it is organic, and violent and safe. There are seems and strands that alone are weak, and together are very nearly indestructible. It is a bridge, a trap and a release.
I’m interested in paths and transitions, in icons and monuments and the way we say the things we either don’t know how to or didn’t know we needed to say. The intersection of the materials are bound in my mind and personal narrative but I hope their presence doesn’t beg for an explanation from me, one always hopes that a work will speak for itself, and not always say the same thing to every viewer. The work will be exposed for 3 months to the weather and will document the transition of shape and form of each piece.
