Uncategorized

The Only Way Down, group show @ A.D., New York

Oscar Bedford, Margaux Dewarrat, Chris Zacher

“Ascending” cannot exist without “descending”. The two actions fluctuate and vibrate rapidly back and forth over any span of time. Minor gains are countered by equally minor losses and a tedious balance persists, impeding growth and orientation.
Through emotional forfeiture the pendulum swings towards descent and the path downward is set. In the depths dwell a sparse set of characters which exist in states of misadventure and melodrama.
A black cat crumples on the floor in a crescent shape, exhausted to the anthem of “no more drama”. The cat’s glazed-over expression stares at no one and nothing in particular. The cats flatness is punctuated by its unusually long tail, which spirals upwards, aspiring to heights the rest of its body will never ascend to.
A ping-pong table cobbled together with debris and assembled with the utmost care and optimism seems unlikely to support the weight of the ball meant to bounce off its imperfect surface. The hobbyist table stands as a reflection of the stilted memory that spawned it or perhaps as a parable for flat-earthers and the impossibility of roundness.
Shins adorned in jeans and sneakers stick shyly out of a brown paper bag at the base of the stairs. Like a disappearing gag gone wrong or the remnants of an unforeseen violence, the partial figure is left with no other option but to stay put (if I carry my legs how will i walk?).
These figures exist in the wake of minor tragedy, left to make heads or tails of their shared circumstance. As their whimsy wains, the weight of their predicament is amplified by the knowledge that the path they took down is not the way back up.

Philip Hinge