November 15 - December 12, 2021
intimate spectres
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Young Space is pleased to present intimate spectres, an
exhibition that takes feelings of presence and absence as a starting point to
weave together twelve artists' perspectives on personal and cultural memory,
the nature of desire, impermanence and the traces left behind.
What does it mean to be close to one another, to indicate a sense
of real knowing and understanding between people? The rituals and habits we
evolve to show affection and care develop in proximity; the places we meet and the
spaces of togetherness become woven into the fabric of our interactions. More
than ever before we are able to maintain—and even build—connection through technology
and services that allow us to connect instantaneously from disparate parts of
the globe, yet intimacy implies a physical closeness that no matter how hard we
try, can’t be replicated via screens.
The artists in this exhibition consider myriad relationships to
people and places that are imbued with a sense of closeness, or a separation
from it. The space between people, itself an entity, can make accordion-like
expansions and contractions; at times it can feel like a looming, solid thing
with the power to change the way we feel about and interact with each other,
whether very distant or incredibly close – or anywhere in between.
Read or download the press release.
Inquire or request a PDF of the entire show here ︎
Optimal viewing experience on desktop. Click and hold any image on the page to move and arrange among the other works.
Humans continuously produce in order to achieve their desire but feel void even when it is achieved. They are mortal, but their possessions are left behind after death. The hollowness of the object looks as if it is opening its mouth and resonating to prove its existence.
The window as a phenomenological space allows us to look out into the world, yet simultaneously acts as a barrier, isolating us from it. In more recent times, another window has become a pervasive presence in our daily lives—the screen. Both act as portals or gateways, one static and familiar, the other infinite and labyrinthian.
Especially, after becoming a mother, the idea of being able to function as a vessel that holds life inside and outside, that bends to carry the life of another person, it's fascinating to me. I often think of my body as a room that encloses someone else’s breath, and tears, hopes and fears, an inhabitable closed space that protects and soothes.
The rope structures of these nets act as warp, their ragged imperfections woven into the new. This transformation becomes part of a continued narrative, informed by the familial moments and unexpected associations that their previous lives evoke.
[The movements of our fingers on screens] remind me of rituals of old Sicilian ladies - the Majara- to which my mother subjected me a few times in the hope of removing my fears or a sunstroke. The lady used to mark paths with her fingers on my belly or on my head, rattling off prayers in a low voice with her eyes closed. Today we are all a little bit ‘the Majara’ of ourselves, connected to our magic stone and capable of perceiving, sensing, codifying, communicating, predicting, diagnosing, loving, winning, dreaming the world.
By creating these fossil-like ghostly compositions that range from abstractions to more representational figurations, my work alludes to forms of life that existed in the world, and are no longer with us, but that get a “second chance.”
