this is all a game

“Horses Running Endlessly” (1995), Gabriel Orozco

"Gestures tend to lose some of their energy when they’re repeated. The shoebox is in the MoMA survey, it’s the first thing you see in the galleries. The dirty ball is there too. So are the yogurt lids, nailed to partition walls. But they feel archival.

The shock and delight of puzzlement, of seeing nothing turn into something before your eyes, are gone.

No one’s to blame; this is the way certain art operates in time."

-Holland Cotter, for the NYT, here

I want this book

click on image to see more

what I mean

(thanks to Gabriel)

mirror cabinet vs. boxes of light

click to enlarge

Some early sketches, which led to

this messy sheet, which breaks down to

basically, the bed option;

the corner option;

and the alley option.

In these I'm pretty obsessed with certain things, as you can probably see. Having some sort of mass of light in the darkness. The objects floating within. The visitor alone in a sea of reflections and scent.

how they look reflected on clear glass. worth it?

But then I came to - this precipitated by a trip to Home Depot - and now I'm trying to come up with something equally (or more) satisfying but less expensive, time-consuming, structurally unsound, wacked out. What I've come up with is... more boxes - this time solid and opaque.

So if anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. I'm up for decisive votes for or against anything... tell me what you think will work, physically, conceptually, aesthetically, whatever. I'm open for business.





P.S. The idea that seemed most promising in my head yesterday was the low-lying bench-like thing with cut-out niches for the objects to sit in, perhaps lined with angled mirrors or glass and lit from within.

deep blue sea

via Natori:
(thanks to Amy)

The Unsinkable Scent

At the Titanic exhibit in Times Square NYC, artifacts left from the tragic event are on display. Among them are pieces of leather luggage, ivory hair brushes, gold jewelry and even cuff links inscribed with the “Tiffany & Co.” logo. But most captivating was a collection of 62 perfume vials—the property of first-class passenger Adolphe Saalfeld, a perfumier from England who boarded the Titanic in 1912. Saalfed headed to New York with ambitions of introducing his perfume to the major department stores. And while he survived the sinking of the Titanic, his signature scents went down with the ship and he never created another perfume.

The vials were recovered on a dive in 2000, protected in the leather case Saalfeld had kept them in. But the astonishment of finding these vials amongst the debris was nothing compared to the fragrance they released, still preserved after nearly a century resting on the ocean floor.

Fragrance can elicit the feeling of being transported to another time and place. That is especially true in this case, as these perfumes just arrived from another time and place- one that continues to intrigue and mesmerize since the night it sank- the Titanic.

It seems like it's always the same old song.