Purple Art
[January 27 2017]
“The Garden of Forking Paths” Organized by Adam Marnie at Magenta Plains, New York
“The Garden of Forking Paths” organized by Adam Marnie was inspired by a short story by Luis Borges of the same name. Both attempt to describe the layered possibilities of reality and the causality of space and time. Kevin Zucker presents a pastel rubbing of various city names, suggesting a delicacy of empires and the possibilities for cities to fade and return to the earth, alongside a romantic nod to the symbolic and narrative power of cities that we cannot imagine being forgotten, and the question of what weaving threads may connect those twelves names, how their distant locations may still be unified in time. Craig Smyth displays an autographed baseball from Hiroshima Japan with a chilling irony that Borges explores; how individuals are just as likely to meet as friends as they are to meet as enemies. The exhibition opening included a reading by Matt Kenny tracing histories of terrorist attacks from national perspectives such as the CIA or Anwar Sadat of Egypt. His reading combines a cold factual logic with the absurdity of events, showing the labyrinth of the garden of forking paths where fate can hinge on the most inconsequential actions. The press release describes “Crystalline memories are adjacent to forgetting, blocked inabilities to remember. One form becomes another. Hands holding hands.”
On view until February 12th at Magenta Plains, 94 Allen St, New York
Text and photo Elise Gallant
