PICTURE ROOM Art Gallery
236 Mulberry St, New York, NY 10012, United States
Open everyday 12 - 8 pm
Windows / Paradise is out there
June 11 - July 11 2015
Edition of 2
Inkjet print – 8.25 x 11.7 in framed
Inspired by the Philip Larkin poem ‘High Windows’, this suite of 10 digital illustrations depict a series of spatial alignments and shifting depths within a field. Exploring the idea that the window is a reflective portal through which to see into another time or space, the sequences fluctuate between pictorial states just as Larkin moves fluidly between present and past, observation and reflection. With their luscious gradients and fractured patterning the works simultaneously seduce and obscure a ‘view’ into an intangible paradise, suggesting a restless yearning and desire for, to take Larkin’s lines:
the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Produced exclusively for Picture Room by Specht Studio, with an accompanying playlist that matches the mood of the works compiled by Specht and available in store.
Some of the tracks:
Don’t Mind Me by Nosaj thing ft. Whoarei
Saxophone Alto by Paul Desmond
We’ve Only Just Once More by Andrew Pekler
Eloy by Deaf Center
Miniature 4 by Matthew Robert Cooper
I’m God by Clams Casino
We were in love by Ta-Ku
Non Hoi by Plaid
Without by Shlohmo
Red ladies in navy pants, & pants by Tülpa
Energy Map Sound Project by Zachary Todd Barr
POEM
High Windows
BY PHILIP LARKIN
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
