I was in Chicago recently installing a new iteration of Composition To Threaten Your Existence for an exhibition at Carrie Secrist Gallery. The show is titled (No) Vacancy and while being organized had been referred to by the gallery as “the Holes show” as it was intended to be (…and is) an exhibition about holes, emptiness, voids and all of the tangential ways in which that could be explored. It was great fun, and I had the opportunity to catch up with many old friends from when I had lived there, plus meeting new and interesting people and seeing a lot of artwork. I enjoyed seeing new work from artists I’ve known for many years, and seeing the way the different galleries evolved and changed to meet new challenges. Everything evolves, and when you live in the midst of it you don’t always notice the changes until later down the road. The same thing happens when you live with a work of art over the course of several years. It may have had an initial draw that seduced you at the beginning, but as you live with it and continue engaging and thinking about it, you notice other elements, or angles, which may continue to grow on you and reveal more of the work’s mysteries.
I received the image below from a dear friend, a collector and long-time supporter of the work and a subscriber to 2011’s Drawing Subscription Mystical Geometries. He and his wife chose to frame the works individually and arrange them in a descending design creating an interesting flow to the work and further breaking up the formal constraints of the work. I’m sure as the work ages, and as they live with it, the drawings will continue to grow in meaning and significance. That’s the fun of living with art.