ALL IS WELL (2021)
At the Kingston Gallery Project Space, March 31-May 2, 2021
The title of this show comes from a fragment in one of my journals: “3:30am and all is well.” Intense dreams had been waking me up throughout much of the quarantine.
I am always interested in what remains of a dream for the conscious mind. Many years ago I would attempt to reconstruct my dreams in journals, trying to note the chronology of events. It would immediately become clear that it was an almost impossible task.
In these pieces, all created in 2020, I was experimenting with a kind of dream imagery, recalled in pieces by the waking mind. I wanted to create fragments that suggested vast, subconscious narratives in the age of COVID.
The works in this show were made on an intimate scale, intended to be viewed closely and privately. Everything is the size of an instant print, a smartphone, a journal entry. The physical version of the show is intended to have the feel of a small bedroom. I included ephemera and instant film snapshots (much of which actually does live in my bedroom). My children, Cy and Avery, appear in a few ways. They are shown in actual snapshots, grounded in daily life, but occasionally they, too, slip into a more surreal place.
The video animations incorporate macro, miniature scenes with photographs of real world subjects. They are built mostly from my own past work. I intentionally combined pictures and videos that were created many years apart. The distortion of time, in both dreams and quarantine, appears throughout this show.
The instant, peel-apart prints were created using a Polaroid 35mm slide printer and an Instant Print Copy machine. They were printed on my last two batches of FP-100C instant film, which is now out of production. The prints were created in two ways: by layering found art history slides, and by double exposing found, vintage photographic imagery.
I chose instant film in part because of a story about the artist Dash Snow. Apparently he had started carrying a Polaroid camera on his wild nights in the hopes that the next morning he might be able to remember what had happened.
(Process notes below image gallery)
Process Notes:
Palermo incorporates imagery from the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, where thousands of mummified bodies are organized in large corridors. I visited 15 years ago and it still shows up in my dreams.
The Night in Question relates to the last thing I am doing most nights: listening to true crime podcasts.
Cabin was created after I watched a documentary about the Unabomber. I dreamt about a cabin shortly after watching it. This animation contains a recent video that I shot at midnight of branches outside of our front door. That video was combined with a macro photograph that I shot many years ago (a pebble, to the right of the cabin).
Fox Den incorporates a scan of an instant print that I shot at least 10 years ago (the snowy trees) with a recent macro photograph of a dried blob of latex rubber (the mountain range).
Fixture is a darkroom print- a photogram (a print created by placing an object directly onto photographic paper and exposing it to light). This photogram was made using the light fixture that hovers above me while I sleep. It is a thick, cloudy glass in a 1960s style, and it has passively loomed over many, many sleeping occupants.
