Chase Langford

at Bryant Street Gallery

Commercial Street Carnivale

When you were little you liked fairs and folk holidays. The rides, the music, the food - it was pure joy. When you grew up you understand that they all are shallow standard commerce-driven enterprises. While getting old, the fairs regain their lost shine, but now that is nostalgia and memories.

Pia Fries

at CRG Gallery

Untitled, 2003/2004

All the tinsel will be washed away over time. All the unimportant stuff will be forgotten. The essence of your past emerges. And if you had a happy life (though you didn't realize it, while the events were unraveling), the happiness will dominate your memories(the light turquoise spots).

Adolfo Estrada

at Dan Galeria

Pintura 0394, 2003

Your life if a chain of different events. Some of them are good(colored figures), some of them are bad (the black figures). The bad events are here so you can distinguish between the bad and the good. When you know the bad, you can really appreciate the good. That's why the good things are bigger and more memorable.

Weekend Edition 38

William Baziotes

The Room, 1945

The room has not only the items that are physically there, but the things that were there and events that happened ( the red lines). That's what makes a house home.

Iva Gueorguieva

at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe

Contamination Check,  2011

Memories : blues, red pain, scars, black despair. Some parts are not connected, because the connecting parts are forgotten. Memory catches the significant events, so the past seems packed. The future is calm, melancholy and static.

Afro Basaldella

at Haunch of Venison

Doppia Figura, 1954

Nude figure. Laying next to you. The room is half-lit. The colors are muted. Shadows. It is a nice view. You are attracted to the person that is laying naked with you. But the attraction is much deeper than a plain sight. It is intricate network of memories, experiences and feelings that you share with that person. This virtual network strengthens and enriches the physical pleasure.

Lesley Vance

at Xavier Hufkens (Art 43 Basel 2012)

Untitled, 2012

At first it was like a game to you (green background). You met at a cafe. Your skills to pick up girls and wits were broken by her steel armour(the figure on the left). Fueled by the mystery and passion, you changed your tactics. You crawled, dug. You have got a couple of dates(circle-like figures in the upper center). It led to a pretty wild relationship(the figure at the upper right corner). But both of you were stuck, you were moving in circles, not progressing. So two of you decided to separate( yellow figure in the right center). You are left only with broken pieces from that relationship (the white figure in the lower right), but you still remember the connection with warmness.

Shinro Ohtake

at Take Ninagawa (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Time Memory 1, 2012

Time is frozen in memory. Time is preserved in small pieces - photos, movies, letters, diaries.The fossil time is used as building blocks for our memories.We polish those blocks as if they were from granite and we cover the floor, walls and ceiling with them in our temple of our experience. But it is not granite. It has been scratched. It has graffiti. It is missing some pieces, so it was patched with some imagination and rationalization. Our magnificent temple of experience can crumble any time.

Phillip Allen

at The approach (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Permanence of the Unexpected Windfall, 2011

Our life experience as it moves from the current events(the bottom of the painting) to the distant past converts into logs. Wood logs (the central and upper parts of the painting). The father the events in time( farther up from the bottom) the more the logs are condensed, some events even collude creating a memory of an event that is actually several events happened a long time ago. All those memories (the logs) burden down onto our life, influencing our behavior and decisions. But we are getting help with this load. Our memory fails(the white-bordered semi-transparent figures). It fails for good reasons. It lets us make new decisions easier. It makes our memories feel better than they were.

Weekend Edition 24

Robert Delaunay

Rhythm, 1912

The rhythm is created bu separate sounds, nevertheless they obey certain laws and rules(the left pane). The timing between the sounds is what distinguish the music from a cacophony. But the timing is the delay between sounds, but the delay is the silence. So the silence defines the music. From another perspective the rhythm influences you. It creates a mood for you(yellow-blue art in the upper left corner of the right pane that creates yellow-blue-red-green-blue-black circle in the upper right corner). Those taps can go deep into your memory to bring up some things from the past(the green arc in lower left corner of the right pane, red-yellow-blue arc from the center to lower right corner).