Alex Nelson
Sacrificed Pavement
6.25.21 - 6.27.21
How do you start when you were just spit out into this, surprised in the meeting of violence and care lingering in your mind from the past, unsure of exactly how you ended up in this garden with these memories? The weeds have been taking over the blossoms at a higher rate from what it looks like, making the florals rare gems, easily forgotten about when fully enveloped in the weeds as you were. But it is not about quantity, the explosions of color become even more sacred through their scarcity. As does love when you have been in the weeds.
Two sides. A set amount of rotations. Pressed impressions.
A love letter can be filled with angst. A love letter needs the angst. Love can only be love because of the angst filling the orange suede armchair in the living room, downstairs, with the tv on the 24 hour news circuit for the remaining 12 hours everyday. This ghost shines blue on the thin wood paneling. The same one that the youngest punched through to interrupt the argument. Love met with angst, just as teenagers need the angst to project them out their bedroom windows above the aging skin sinking into the orange chair as they creak just enough to create suspicion. Teens slide into the late 90’s sedan one by one filling slowly as the sprawl passes and red orange leaves twist in blue twilight turning black. Heavier heavier heavier. Now those fully weighted balding rubbers spin toward the one lane underpass by the black trees, by the rejected farmhouse, all by way of the rejected varsity jackets. Never did like those jocks, yet a needed opposition to fuel the angst to make our love. The reason the tires spin on these nights is to search for the ghosts in the one lane underpass. FLASH FLASH OFF FLASH orchestrated to the hum, the drivers hands regain control illuminating the real reason they, we, search for the ghosts, it is the we and that’s why we keep ending up here. The ghosts are a means to an end to be with others, close, closer, as close as you can fucking get. And even closer than that, knowing distance is coming as the spirits leave for university, the military, while others stay at the local restaurant and gas station. This is a love blossoming in the form of acknowledgment and creating something new in time with others in a forever past, with a forever soundtrack that has limitless sequences. This is one sequence in the cosmos that butt up against one another.
I’m beginning to digress through all of these descriptors, in a similar way to the disintegrating tape decks moved through fresh skin to the mouth of the machine spitting out sounds as leaves pass. These sounds mark time like the gestures of brothers frozen in age, wrestling softly on the red river.
Let’s listen to that side again, again, again, above the dinner party that was put on to try to revive something that has been lost, a band aid that will still need to come off revealing the scars which don’t heal.
Those secret martinis of the elders spill into the whispers in the red 2:30 lockers, secret martinis that will be had in years to come, dirty. But in that now, it is too much to mix, you can only chase. A chase that has been lost, a chase that has been given up by aged skin in order to blend in with the neighbors' sacrifice. A sacrifice not totally unlike that of the artists, just less romantic, I guess. Decisions have to be made, vices and desires given into because of that terrifying orange reclined future, the possibility of it and the hopes of never being absorbed by it, killed.
How old was Blink when they made that album that our dads wouldn't let us listen to but our moms would, no that’s right, reversed. The wood paneling isn’t controlled by the hairy forearms holding a nightly Coors, it is controlled by the winded blonde hair, like yours from what I can remember.
I started the last exhibition writing lost and not to be a broken record but I still don’t even know where to start, or where this is beginning, I have some thoughts on where it began but those will be saved. I’ve said I’ve been writing this for a while, but it’s just been writing in a diary and nowhere near something that makes sense outside of my fingers and for my eyes and maybe another set later. Not to say that this makes sense. It doesn't help that Summer has taken control after the first year of grad school finished and I just want to hangout with my friends before they leave, before I leave. I’ve felt guilty about not really WRITING writing this before now but being in the garden has felt just as productive and more special than staring at this screen alone as fragments enter and are erased and reordered. This screen will be here later but who knows how long the garden will be before the seasons change. This red of being in the moment feels so, is so seductive and alluring as the Sirens on the rocks must have felt to every one of their victims. So as I should have been writing this sooner, I’ve been in the red. And it feels just as productive and more fun than the coolness of a sterile, expected, well slept world. I won't ever be able to sum it up in words as they fail without the body's gestures, and that failure is what keeps me, us, looking and writing. So here’s an exhibition with Alex Nelson’s photographs, it’s Summer, the floor is red, and we are the tears dressed in blue.
This is not a goodbye. I’ll see you on the other side of the bridge when you feel the need to hit me with light.
Sacrificed Pavement
6.25.21 - 6.27.21
How do you start when you were just spit out into this, surprised in the meeting of violence and care lingering in your mind from the past, unsure of exactly how you ended up in this garden with these memories? The weeds have been taking over the blossoms at a higher rate from what it looks like, making the florals rare gems, easily forgotten about when fully enveloped in the weeds as you were. But it is not about quantity, the explosions of color become even more sacred through their scarcity. As does love when you have been in the weeds.
Two sides. A set amount of rotations. Pressed impressions.
A love letter can be filled with angst. A love letter needs the angst. Love can only be love because of the angst filling the orange suede armchair in the living room, downstairs, with the tv on the 24 hour news circuit for the remaining 12 hours everyday. This ghost shines blue on the thin wood paneling. The same one that the youngest punched through to interrupt the argument. Love met with angst, just as teenagers need the angst to project them out their bedroom windows above the aging skin sinking into the orange chair as they creak just enough to create suspicion. Teens slide into the late 90’s sedan one by one filling slowly as the sprawl passes and red orange leaves twist in blue twilight turning black. Heavier heavier heavier. Now those fully weighted balding rubbers spin toward the one lane underpass by the black trees, by the rejected farmhouse, all by way of the rejected varsity jackets. Never did like those jocks, yet a needed opposition to fuel the angst to make our love. The reason the tires spin on these nights is to search for the ghosts in the one lane underpass. FLASH FLASH OFF FLASH orchestrated to the hum, the drivers hands regain control illuminating the real reason they, we, search for the ghosts, it is the we and that’s why we keep ending up here. The ghosts are a means to an end to be with others, close, closer, as close as you can fucking get. And even closer than that, knowing distance is coming as the spirits leave for university, the military, while others stay at the local restaurant and gas station. This is a love blossoming in the form of acknowledgment and creating something new in time with others in a forever past, with a forever soundtrack that has limitless sequences. This is one sequence in the cosmos that butt up against one another.
I’m beginning to digress through all of these descriptors, in a similar way to the disintegrating tape decks moved through fresh skin to the mouth of the machine spitting out sounds as leaves pass. These sounds mark time like the gestures of brothers frozen in age, wrestling softly on the red river.
Let’s listen to that side again, again, again, above the dinner party that was put on to try to revive something that has been lost, a band aid that will still need to come off revealing the scars which don’t heal.
Those secret martinis of the elders spill into the whispers in the red 2:30 lockers, secret martinis that will be had in years to come, dirty. But in that now, it is too much to mix, you can only chase. A chase that has been lost, a chase that has been given up by aged skin in order to blend in with the neighbors' sacrifice. A sacrifice not totally unlike that of the artists, just less romantic, I guess. Decisions have to be made, vices and desires given into because of that terrifying orange reclined future, the possibility of it and the hopes of never being absorbed by it, killed.
How old was Blink when they made that album that our dads wouldn't let us listen to but our moms would, no that’s right, reversed. The wood paneling isn’t controlled by the hairy forearms holding a nightly Coors, it is controlled by the winded blonde hair, like yours from what I can remember.
I started the last exhibition writing lost and not to be a broken record but I still don’t even know where to start, or where this is beginning, I have some thoughts on where it began but those will be saved. I’ve said I’ve been writing this for a while, but it’s just been writing in a diary and nowhere near something that makes sense outside of my fingers and for my eyes and maybe another set later. Not to say that this makes sense. It doesn't help that Summer has taken control after the first year of grad school finished and I just want to hangout with my friends before they leave, before I leave. I’ve felt guilty about not really WRITING writing this before now but being in the garden has felt just as productive and more special than staring at this screen alone as fragments enter and are erased and reordered. This screen will be here later but who knows how long the garden will be before the seasons change. This red of being in the moment feels so, is so seductive and alluring as the Sirens on the rocks must have felt to every one of their victims. So as I should have been writing this sooner, I’ve been in the red. And it feels just as productive and more fun than the coolness of a sterile, expected, well slept world. I won't ever be able to sum it up in words as they fail without the body's gestures, and that failure is what keeps me, us, looking and writing. So here’s an exhibition with Alex Nelson’s photographs, it’s Summer, the floor is red, and we are the tears dressed in blue.
This is not a goodbye. I’ll see you on the other side of the bridge when you feel the need to hit me with light.
Volvo, 2019, 32” x 42 ½ ”, pigment print
Nora at High Street, 2019, 24” x 30”, pigment print
Untitled (Cosmos), 2019, 24 x 32”, pigment print
Phantom, 2020, 24” x 38 ¾”, pigment print
Drawer in Westhampton beach house, 2017, 16” x 20”, pigment print
Beatles fans I, 1966, photograph by Walter Kale, 10” x 8” silver gelatin press photograph
Beatles fans II, 1964, photographer unknown, 10” x 8” silver gelatin press photograph
Pool baptism, 2019, 24 x 30”, pigment print
Untitled (Lovers II), 2020, 32” x 40” 2020
Brown Street Bridge, 2015/2020, 40” x 48” pigment print
Down Town video still, 2021, 11” x 19 ½ ”, pigment print