Passages: Moving Through
Ought I to say that the form of change is fixity, or more precisely, that change is an endless search for fixity? A nostalgia for inertia: indolence and its frozen paradises. Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary. It is transition. But the moment I say transition, the spell is broken. Transition is not wisdom, but a simple going toward… Transition vanishes: only thus is it transition.
–Octavio Paz, The Monkey Grammarian (1974)
It’s that time of the year when I am in the midst of preparing for my two annual shows, with openings in June and July. The first show is at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA and opens on Friday, June 9, 2023.
This will be my 24th consecutive annual show there which still surprises me when I say it. Would have thought I would have worn out my welcome a long time ago, that my time might come and gone.
But a lot of things have changed in the world– and in my work– over those years since that first Red Tree show back in 2000 and I am somehow still standing. This constant change we experience serves as the theme of this year’s show which I am calling Passages.
I agree very much with the words from Octavio Paz at the top, that we are in an endless search for fixity. A frozen paradise, he calls it. I call it that sweet spot where all possible conditions are lined up in a way that we think will satisfy us forever.
An ultimate endpoint or destination in our journey.
An impossibility because we are forever in a state of transition, of passage, from one state of being to the next. Conditions changes constantly and as a result we change as we adjust to those conditions. Each change transforms us into a different version of ourselves.
As a result, as Paz points out, wisdom lies in the momentary. For me, that translates as embracing this continuous evolution, of recognizing that we are never fully forever the same person that we were at the beginning of the journey or even at any point along the way.
Things are lost and things are gained.
We constantly are synthesizing what remains into something new. We may think at any one moment that we have achieved the version of ourselves we seek but that is but an eyeblink in time. We have already began changing again before the eyes are fully open.
In short, just when we reach the destination that we believed we are seeking, we are already beginning the next journey past that point.
Hello. Pleased to meet you. Gotta go!
And that’s okay provided we don’t hold too tightly to imagined pasts or improbable futures. We are creatures of change, always making that passage from the present us to the future us.
I think you could see this idea on full display if you were to take what might be representative examples of my work from each year from the past 24 years and putting them side by side. You can easily identify it as mine but there is always change, evolution of some sort. Sometimes subtle. Sometimes more pronounced.
It is the same but it is never the same same.
I don’t know that this fully describes the show. This is my first swing at talking about this show and it is still not yet 6:30 AM. I am sure how I see and describe it will change as I work through the show. It, like all of us, is also in a state of passage.
Here’s a song, Changes, about that these transitions from David Bowie. One line in particular stands out for me:
So I turned myself to face meBut I’ve never caught a glimpse
Basically, he is saying that before he could turn to take a look at the new him in the mirror, he was already something different.
Changes…
Redtree Times 