FITS
Remembrance is how we keep ourselves
Inside ourselves with the people we love.
Together we sing
Or apart we blow dryly away
Like grass or thin branches
In our hearts it shines
Even though our faces remain clear. The water rises,
But we find warm places to survive.
There is no place For us
Here but we glide Into the sky.
It does not create a lot of problems.
Figure in the Sky
I took the title Figure in the Sky from a yet-to-be-made/imaginary artwork from a series of imagined artworks based on my high school experience and the major after-results. The artwork specifically had to do with my mother’s passing away and I used it as a metaphor for always thinking about her, even without trying. The title could have been different but was taken on that day based on my feelings then. The process of making it into an art show has given me a lot to think about.
Each piece in this show mirrors a process, which begins in one instant and ends far into the future or perhaps never. An idea goes through a infinite number of transformations picking up associations, canceling some out and, hopefully, eventually becoming realized in public. Of course, in many ways that is just the beginning.
Cora Kobischka’s work is poetry. Poetry that is not textual but still natural, organic and visual. Her latest works focus on memory and the processes we use to keep memories. In a beautifully contemporary way, her new series uses the metaphorical qualities of nature and materializes them into different scenarios, whether through sumi-ink and charcoal or hollowed out egg shells. Vessels that float away into the future.
Takuya Hayaki crashes! His ambitious and dense assemblages mix materials and gritty gestures. More violent, more manly. Yet, there is no misunderstanding the work’s power. In his latest series, a headless angel and its head are strained through various incarnations, never finding stillness. Good luck getting inside.
Gabriel Hopson. My work is a posit on the contemporary art scene. Whether right or wrong - hollow, structured and replete with meaning like cells in a body. Myself: quiet, uncomfortable, lacking but still discovering.
Caitlin Baucom’s performances initiate new standards. Complex with attitude. Lights, sounds, images, sensations. Projected at her, the world shifts uncomfortably. If you want experience, mirror her and become a cracked open portal of individuality.
Brian Chillemi is a musician and filmmaker. We traded books once. I let him borrow Neil Young’s biography Shakey and he turned me on to Bob Dylan’s autobiography. I love what Brian does as a musician and am glad to hear him play at the opening.
Allison Yano was recommended by a mentor. Pratt is a mythic place to me, and she is a student there. Somehow, I got it in my head Pratt is the core of attitude in New York. Yano has revealed anime as an inspiration. I have my own memories of Japanese animation, making him sleep-deprived and a poor high school student.
William Hempel is a conceptualist. We were art handlers when we met. Don’t ask me about it. He described his work in this show (Para-Hollywood) as an “anti- event.” Later I found this quote:
“I’m interested for the most part in what’s not happening, that area between events
which could be called the gap. This gap exists in the blank and void regions or
settings that we never look at. A museum of different kinds of emptiness could be
developed. The emptiness could be defined by the actual installation of the art.
Installations could empty rooms not fill them.” — Robert Smithson, “What is a
Museum” (1967)
I’d like to thank the owner of Space 776 Jourdain Lee for the opportunity to curate. This is my most ambitious show and only my third, but it was a lot of fun. I’d like to thank the artists for their participation and those artists and others who have inspired me up to this point: Will, Jordan, Cécile, Cora, Takuya, Michaels and many others. I’d also like to thank Lisa Banner for her guidance in the past several months and my art/architecture history teacher Larry Busbea who inspired my move to New York. Finally, my gratitude to my father who is my twin spirit, my brothers and sisters. Mischa, I hope you like this show and concept. And most of all, I’d like to thank my mother who was a great head honcho.
Key words: grief, remembrance, technology, local but contemporary globalized perspectives, the external vs. the internal world, religion, phenomena, metaphysics, the muse, Buddhism, migration, compassion, undertaking, associations.
-Gabriel Hopson, artist/curator