EUGÈNE ATGET, DAVIDE BALLIANO, LAEH GLENN, PETER HALLEY, JULIJE KNIFER, IMI KNOEBEL, SHAWN KURUNERU, RICHARD LONG, MIWA OGASAWARA, JOHN STEZAKER, EVE SUSSMAN, SIMON LEE, BENY WAGNER, RICHARD T. WALKER, LETHA WILSON, MASAO YAMAMOTO.

THE MISTERIOUS DEVICE WAS MOVING FORWARD

June 26th – August 16th, 2014

Longhouse Projects is pleased to present the mysterious device was moving forward featuring the work of Eugène Atget, Davide Balliano, Laeh Glenn, Peter Halley, Julije Knifer, Imi Knoebel, Shawn Kuruneru, Richard Long, Miwa Ogasawara, John Stezaker, Eve Sussman and Simon Lee, Beny Wagner, Richard T. Walker, Letha Wilson, and Masao Yamamoto.

The title of the exhibition is a line from the journal Werner Herzog kept as he walked from Munich to Paris in November of 1974. In 1978, Of Walking in Ice was published as an abridged version of the original diary. In the pages, Herzog documents his observations in short descriptive sentences. The images conjured are immediate and fleeting. He does not stay in one place for long. . “While walking, so many things pass through one’s head, the brain rages.” Asserting the connection between a physical and psychological passage, this exhibition brings together the works of fifteen international artists.

Masao Yamamoto’s small-scale photographs of streets and valleys, peepholes and portals, prompt a consideration of the meditative object triggering one’s personal memories. Alternatively, John Stezaker’s seven Pursuits from his 3rd Person Series edit out the larger scene, drawing attention to tertiary figures strolling through usually over-looked backgrounds. Peter Halley’s Kodaliths from 1981 map alternative routes and movement through a city’s grid suggesting the dèrive of the Situationist’s Psychogeography. Articulating how the eye and mind grants access beyond the body’s placement, Beny Wagner’s Invisible Measure posits contemporary footage of transparent surfaces, storefronts, glass partitions, and windows with the theorist Paul Scheerbart reading his Glasarchitektur from 1914. On view are two “meanders” by Julije Knifer, a vacant room by Miwa Ogasawara, and Davide Balliano’s two and three dimensional inverted arches, presenting depictions of and allusions to thresholds and transient intersections, examining the true space found in an image; one that is simultaneously inside and outside the multiplicity of space(s)(*2) . Doorways in the photographs of Parisian alleys by Eugène Atget; broken window frames in paintings by Laeh Glenn; a view Eve Sussman and Simon Lee offer into the façade of a Berlin apartment building; streets captured in Letha Wilson’s Possibilities for a Car Ride; imagined valleys of Shawn Kuruneru’s ink paintings; sensory expanses found in Richard T. Walker’s neon sculpture; textual referents Richard Long employs in his Meandering and Circling, and the serial colors of Imi Knoebel’s Anima Mundi. They demonstrate locations “as a place as much as a psychic geography.”


*1) Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice, p.1

*2) Immanuel Kant, “Selections from a Critique of Pure Reason (1781,1787)”, translated by F. Max Müller, Basic Writings of Kant, ed. Allen W. Wood, p. 45