Nocturnal Ⅰ
Nocturnal Ⅰ is the first in a series of exhibitions of contemporary artwork that position the nightscape as a curtain for exploration: works of painting, photography, and poetic texts are motivated by or engaged with architecture, landscape, the natural world and the body, through abstraction, metaphor, physicality, and psychological means.
In the technological advancements following 1879, the commercialization and mass proliferation of electric light distanced us from our previously essential connection to nightglow emissions — an atmospheric phenomenon which once offered subtle luminescence to the night. Nothing was ever fully dark, never wholly asleep. Electric light ushered in a different era of semi-darkness.
Our relationship to the night sky used to locate us in time and space, adhered to the clock, the compass, and the calendar. The agrarian, natural rhythms of sea and land were compelled to follow the pursuits of agriculture, architectural and urban development. The technology of astronomy provided uses for exploration (at its most romantic) and imperialism (at its most violent). As we continue to dissimulate the celestial body in the age of electrification, the loss of photosensitivity mimics our myopic relationship with nature and politics. In the open night sky we can literally see into the furthest distances, observe celestial events that have already occurred, imagine multiple futures, and recognize that the present tense is only a myth.
In rhythm with the phases that cascade through an earthly eventide, this exhibition will pass through multiple stages. Its serial nature will unfold musically like the practice of composing the notturno or the nocturne sequentially. Nocturnal I draws relationships between loss of sight and vision — and considers the impossibility of now.
