de Young Museum, SF 2015

17 SECONDS OF BLACK

How do we live? We exist simultaneously between seconds that can be apocalyptic and graceful, minutes that are mediocre, and hours that stand still. History records these occurrences in ink, pressed between pages in books, placed above us, out of reach. But a tradition that relies on the mechanical application of time-recognition, and groups our experiences into singular episodes with no intersections cannot truly document our lives.

During his residency, Rodney Ewing questions, through text and works on paper, how we view time, memory, and history as linear and isolated constructs instead of concurrent moments. Days and Occasions: text applied directly to walls with graphite. Each line of events/moments/observations is separated by increments of time that run parallel to each other to emphasize the analogous nature of our reality.

Days and Occassions was applied to a 180 foot roll of paper and wrapped around the walls with video screen displays. The works on paper functioned as a new screen, where images are projected to interact with text, recording what happens between the minutes and seconds, the sublime to the ridiculous, the tragic and the beautiful, in order to create a more intimate account than what we are subjected to in our daily lives. Ewing thus created a specific site that has to be navigated both physically and conceptually.

Visitors were invited to contribute their own “Days and Occasions” by stenciling directly on the wall of the gallery. The goal of the project is to have a physical record of the simultaneous and overlapping nature of our mutual existence.