up the long slide (even jack black)

TL; DR: below the surface & to the sun (Verticality, Part Two, by K.I.A.)

The original “Verticality” image arrangement (post) became concrete because of a synchronicity. I’d selected a series of photos of ephemeral moments — of disparate content, and taken with separate intents — which were captured over the course of a year, and then grouped them by elevation (how far the subject was from the ground). A vertical visual poem.

Just after I’d curated that grouping, by chance, I came across the poem “High Windows” by Philip Larkin. Here’s its last stanza:

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.

The poem’s last stanza resonates with the themes of The Window (continuity, infinity, with hints perhaps of both despair and transcendence… ). And, of course, the main hook was that all the photos in this series (of series) are, literally, taken from a high window.

So I used the poem as the connecting thread for that first post some time ago, but for a while now I’ve wanted to do a Verticality sequel. (Or… or maybe a franchise, at some point merchandising the IP with toys, maybe a gin or a tequila line, and possibly a cologne or a perfume — with signature top notes of transcendence, and base notes of despair). But I’ve held off for dittophobia.

Then a few days ago, out of nowhere, this famous line popped into my head:

SEE THE REST OF THE IMAGES AND READ MORE (SUBSCRIBE!) AT THE K.I.A. SUBSSTACK HERE

L.A. Art Collector: "No There There" acquired

“No There There / No Hear Hear” by K.I.A. as installed a at Los Angeles art collector’s home. 84 x 60” Oilstick on industrial reflective tape on aluminum. (Part of the Transformer series.)

The work is transtemporal (like much of my work) -- there is a complex bas-relief texture of a Victorian petit point motto that reveals beneath the 21st century material. This work fuses the silver palimpsest series, and my linear mandala/DNA spectrogram/sliced collage approach.

The text reads "No Hear Hear, No There There", expanding on the Gertrude Stein quote about unreliable memory and perception of place, and emptiness, to include 'here/now' and not just 'then/there' ('Hear' aurally sounds as 'Here'). The mirror tape is utilized for another layer of the palimpsest, forming an abstracted digitalesque map of Oakland, GS's hometown. (Re: a map is not the territory, never is the actual place, just like memory...)

The reflective quality of the work allows the colors in the room, or the viewer, to resolve/dissolve into the piece. It also creates a shifting or unstable optical appearance as one moves around the work, with the different textures or sections luminescing at different angles or time of day.)

No set Time. No concrete Place. No set Meaning* -- interpretation of the phrase shifts when using a different sense -- one hears "Here" but sees "Hear", so the text can simultaneously be understood as  "No praise, No comfort" (no encouraging claps of "hear, hear" from the crowd, no comforting pats of "there there" from Mom.)

*Final feint: the title of the work is actually "Here Her, There He"