House Show

an exhibition about straining to look out of the corner of your eye – about longing for the off-camera action – about trying to know a book by doing everything but reading it. "I remembered, and kept remembering, a display I had seen more than 20 years ago at the Museum of Science in Boston. In the large hall that houses their giant Van de Graaff generator, there was a comparatively small light installation mounted on the wall. It was a vertical strip of red LEDs, slightly pulsing and flickering. Looking at it straight on, there was nothing else to see. When I turned my head away, the clear image of a red winged insect appeared for an untrustworthy fraction of a second and then disappeared. I looked back at the light and saw nothing, flicked my eyes away again and the image of the insect popped up in the trailing corner of my vision. I let my vision fall slack, turning my head left to right in front of the LED strip, and tried to catch a more than fleeting view of the bug. I could only pull the image from the light with the sweeping motion of my eyes. As soon as my gaze settled, there was nothing to see."