“Those suitors prattled indoors and through the  town.
“That day”, they said, but mostly “this day,  Tomorrow”.
Ernest Sandeed, Standard Time, Ithaca,

Jago,

In dreams, I lift my head to face a jury. Thick wood table, thick wood non-carpeted floors.  This dream: I have had three times in a week, and I am still unsure of what crime I stand  accused of. The evidence, like  fragments of a story: a setting, a time, an image of an aftermath, a few quotes -here and there, witnesses -here and there. This antenarrative is supposedly my own, but I have no memories of a time leading up to this present. This present is supposedly my own, but I have no anchors to  tell you the year, the town, the weather.
There is a certain Slant of light: Dickinson’s slant of light, not a Mediterranean one. And  here, I wake up and I am no longer in the dream and I have done nothing terrible and I am reminded that I have to write to you.

About the image: it is dated from 1975, on a day that seemed warm and sunny (let’s say mid spring, sometime around May) pulled from the archives of Phyllis Lambert’s travels to Greece. It is labeled Iles Ioniennes (let’s say Ithaca). I am told that in her archives there are multiple slides depicting wrought iron gates and burglar bars -midday sun, overshadowed flora, bright white stone, well guarded homes. You can tell the sky must have been clear and of that incomparable grecian blue. When Cyrenne first mentioned the photograph I pictured it a little different: perhaps more oppressive, definitely less romantic. In 75, Greece was just coming out of the Junta dictatorship. Political unrest was definitely palpable, but I imagine there must have been a sense of a new opening to the world, or that an impression of possibility was returned to its people.

David Cyrenne’s wall mounted pieces are bold. He has been pulling sketches from the collection of archival images for a few years now: the ways in which the gates hit glass, reflecting a horizon, the curvatures in the shadows. A large painting framed in aluminum, is punctuated with bright blue stained glass, casting discrete shading within its center. Most of Cyrenne’s materials are repurposed. A 100 year old glass and vintage wood, is  harmoniously combined with abstract painting, felt and aluminum. If you were to tell me these had been made 50 years ago, I would believe you.

This nostalgia for a past we have not known, some call it an affliction. Others claim it is a depressive trait, to be constantly facing backwards from a moment instead of looking ahead. About Greece: it is impossible to think of the place and not think of ruins.

Paris Hynes’ wood sculptures are haunting – the way remains from any violent event would be,  or clues to a dislocated antiquity, the traces of a people. Here, you might say it is possible to  encounter figurative wood sculptures and think of futurity but I would reply that even in this futurity these objects would act as proof of a time passed. Hynes’ skillful carving and refined eye for design inform his sculptural choices. These works are imbued with a deep respect for the material and for the history of his medium.

What I am trying to get at is a mode of narrativization, that works backwards and simultaneously, suggesting a type of ambiguity that is malleable enough to play with, malleable enough to insert your own. I wish you could see: the artworks in the gallery are enchanting, and side by side they seem to function like poetic fragments, in which temporalities, psychogeography and archeology frame a personal affectation for minimalism, formalism and a slightly outsider folk art revival.

I have researched Greek archival images of  cityscapes and architecture, sculptural fragments of legs from antiquity, I have pulled facts from 1975: in arts, in geo-politics, financial markets, but that isn’t quite where the story lives.

I am so eager to read you, and encounter the  fragments that form your personal archeology. To be led into your memories of Ithaca in spring, while standing in direct relation to these works, their materiality and the photograph.

Sincerely,
M. S. B.