Detail of sculpture- materials steel, cheesecloth, paint
EXHIBITION
in visible
Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art
Snug Harbor Cultural Center
February 29 through May 2, 2020
Extended through August 2020
This exhibition was made possible by an Art Fund grant from Staten Island Arts funded through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the Samuel I Newhouse Foundation.
In Visible is an exhibition of drawings and sculpture that explore the tension held between two spaces;literally and metaphorically. Drawn and sewn threads stitch relationships between what we see and what we don’t see, what we talk about and what we don’t hear, and ultimately who we are in relationship to the world around us.
It is about the visible and hidden ways in which we connect with one another and how our world is affected by the ways in which we do, or do not communicate.
Many of the drawings in the exhibition are pencil on paper with text and stitched elements and were created over the past several years.
The exhibition is centered around a large scale sculpture that winds through two galleries and attaches to the walls on both ends via a system of tethered objects. One end holds small illuminated boxes with images from the El Paso/Juarez border where I grew up and the opposite wall is composed of a variety of old toys and other items found on the beach in NYC where I currently live. These are items that resemble the kinds of things my brother and I found and played with as children in the irrigation canals leading out of the Rio Grande river on the border.
The three large scale paintings and the aforementioned sculpture contain text and imagery from the following poem I wrote about my childhood memories of growing up on the border:
In Visible
DB Lampman, 2019
I can't remember
why
I can't remember
How the water fed our fields
fed our dreams
Stay on your side
my side
our front line
sinks in the mud
In visible lines
in the cracked dirt
define our place
shimmer and cut
My land
your land
we land
This is the front line
The walls of mud
flash in the rain
When I flash
I flood
I bleed
My blood
your blood
our flood
We swirl in our mud and hay and glass castles
I cast my line
across divides
Treasures of garbage and glass
shimmer and cut
Where do water bugs go
when the river dries up
Do they hide in the cracks
of my skin
or float on the skin of my blood
your blood
our blood
our mud
Stay on your side
my side
our front line
sinks in the mud
We all shimmer
we all cut
we all bleed
This is not our wall.
© 2019 by DB Lampman