Reconstructing the Fold, 2013-14
Herndon Gallery, Yellow Springs, OH
“Build a wall and live in it” – Gordon Matta Clark.
In Reconstructing the Fold, Black follows a form of making where the intangible and the handcrafted merge. In an arch of assembly, disassembly and reconstruction, Black began by gathering boards into the form of a small, inverted architectural container, nested below a temporary surface|ceiling|floor. A world into itself, the substance of this form, slowly unmade, pushed past and through this threshold that shelters and limits it. In-formed by memory, a second like-structure was made in tandem, upright, across the axis of the fold. This installation renders duration and action equally significant to any material object by allowing the work to unfold throughout the exhibition period in real time.
Reconstructing the Fold is a further iteration of a previous installation titled Rebuilding Mayfield, in which Black and collaborator John Preus attempted to produce two identical worlds on each side of a vertical wall, exploring intersubjectivity and the zone between transmission and reception. Reconstructing the Fold throws fresh light, and casts new shadows by addressing less the wall than the ceiling/floor, in which case Black explores this time – intrasubjectivity – the spheres of the individual human psyche and the folds within which they are contained.
