近距离内射合集

Let鈥檚 try an experiment. Wherever you are, put your cellphone away and go for a short walk. If you鈥檙e in the city, take a walk around the block. If you鈥檙e in nature, spend three to five minutes just walking around. Keep your senses engaged.

Notice how the shapes and colors around you change as you move through space. Concentrate on how those shapes and colors feel. But don鈥檛 label anything. Don鈥檛 let a single word enter your mind. The second you think 鈥渂ird,鈥� 鈥渨ind,鈥� 鈥済reen鈥� or 鈥渉ot,鈥� you lose. Can you do it? Is it possible to experience the world as an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of sense impressions without breaking things up into categories or using language?

鈥淭o see is to forget the name of the thing one sees,鈥� the early 20th century French writer Paul Val茅ry once said. It鈥檚 much easier said than done.

As we walk around, we are constantly bombarded with nameable objects that trigger thoughts, whether we want them to or not. I might say I鈥檓 taking a walk 鈥渢o clear my head,鈥� but am I really clearing it?

Or am I just replacing whatever annoying garbage was previously there with new, more pleasant images and thoughts? I鈥檓 still naming and categorizing things. My brain is still recognizing 鈥渂lue sky,鈥� 鈥減retty flower.鈥� And as long as I鈥檓 still looking at the world through the prism of language, I鈥檓 not really seeing things as they are.

Only a few, rare artists in the history of art have found ways to counteract this problem. Two of them, Larry Bell and Susanna Fritscher, are showing together right now at Pie Projects Contemporary Art in Santa Fe through Aug. 29. Their two-person show, 鈥淎s Light, as Air,鈥� is exquisite. Instead of representing nameable objects, they allow us to experience the effects of light, space and color independently.

Bell鈥檚 鈥淯ntitled (Red Poppy/Habanero)鈥� consists of two transparent red boxes without tops or bottoms. The inner 鈥渉abanero鈥� one feels relatively dark and dense, while the outer 鈥減oppy鈥� one is as light and bright as a poppy flower basking in sunlight. It feels like an echo or halo of the inner box 鈥� a sort of emanation.

By extracting two red colors from their real-world referents and placing them together in a white-cube gallery, Bell unglues them from their linguistic and cultural associations. The sight of a red habanero might flood our brains with all sorts of images and ideas: spicy foods, firey passion, Mesoamerican cultures, the city of Havana, Cuba, and so on. A red poppy might make us think of Flanders Fields in World War I, Palestine (it鈥檚 their national flower) or even the narcotic effects of opium, which is derived from poppies.

I like that Bell preserves his real-world referents parenthetically, so we know the colors really did come from life. They鈥檙e not just random, computer-generated hex codes. But I also like that the colors get to be themselves, fully themselves, independent of the objects with which they were once associated. If I were a gleam of light on a habanero chile, I鈥檇 love to be reborn as a Larry Bell sculpture.

His other sculpture in the show, 鈥淭riolith (Spa/Sunflower/Dusk),鈥� is the visual equivalent of a three-note chord. The 鈥渟unflower鈥� side is a gradient of dark yellow-orange, 鈥渟pa鈥� is silvery blue and 鈥渄usk鈥� is reminiscent of purplish-gray tinted sunglass lenses. All three panes of colored glass are slightly mirrored, so they reflect each other 鈥� and the viewer 鈥� which generates additional shapes and colors, like overtones in music.

If the three panes constitute a chord, I think it鈥檚 something like a D-minor chord 鈥� dark and mysterious, but still carrying a bit of the D chord鈥檚 sunny brightness. It鈥檚 the experience of sinking into the spa-like comfort of the dusk of life while fondly remembering, but no longer yearning for, the golden sunflower of youth.

Is that too literal an interpretation of the piece, too specific, too narrative, too overwrought? Probably yes to all. But Bell鈥檚 work lends itself to such poetic interpretations, and sometimes I can feel his artworks more deeply when I make up these kinds of stories. Later, I try to forget the stories and simply experience the dance of light and color, keeping the feelings the stories gave me while letting the words drop away.

Bell has other works in the show, including a series of small lyrical watercolors from the late-1990s and early 2000s, which I鈥檇 never seen. If I had an extra $4,000, I鈥檇 buy one. They鈥檙e delightful.

Fritscher has never shown her work in the U.S. before, according to Pie Projects鈥� co-owner, Alina Borsa, which is astonishing, considering that she鈥檚 shown at major museums around the world since the 1990s. In fact, Philippe-Alain Michaud, a curator at Paris鈥� Pompidou Center, is the one who introduced her to Borsa. Who knows when Fritscher鈥檚 work will be seen in New Mexico again, so don鈥檛 miss the chance to see it now. It absolutely must be experienced in person, too. It鈥檚 unphotographable. I couldn鈥檛 even get a good video of it.

But I will try to describe it.

Have you ever looked at your reflection in the water, then blown on the water, and the ripples from your breath caused your reflection to disappear? What if you could blow on a white painting and the painting rippled and disappeared like that? That鈥檚 what I experienced in front of Fritscher鈥檚 art.

Fritscher takes the sheerest white gossamer fabrics imaginable and removes all the horizontal threads, the weft, leaving only the vertical ones, the warp. This itself is a painstaking process, because she must take them out one by one, by hand, and the fabric is so fine that there are thousands of threads to remove.

She then installs these sheets of vertical white threads against a white wall so they hover just a couple inches from the wall鈥檚 surface. Even when you get close, it鈥檚 hard to know what you鈥檙e seeing unless someone explains it to you. They look like floating rectangles of shimmering white light that are somehow casting shadows. Then, if someone breathes on one of the pieces, or the gallery door opens, creating a draft, the thousands of individual threads will start to vibrate and ripple, as if the very fabric of reality were dissolving before your eyes.

I鈥檝e seen a lot of minimalist and minimalist-inspired art, and it rarely amazes me. Fritscher鈥檚 work amazed me. She took something that鈥檚 very close to nothing 鈥� sheer white fabric 鈥� then removed half the threads, making it even less. But somehow, this barely-there thing becomes 鈥� I don鈥檛 even know what. A quantum portal? Something beyond words.

Bell鈥檚 work made me think of music 鈥� colors as chords. Fritscher鈥檚 made me think of Aeolian harps, stringed instruments designed to be played by the wind. Maybe thinking of the visible world as music 鈥� a symphony of vibrating patterns 鈥� is a way to forget the names of the things we鈥檙e seeing, and to simply see.

If you try my walking experiment, then see this show, try the walking experiment again. That鈥檚 a lot for me to ask, I know. But I also know I have a handful of dedicated readers who might be willing to give it a go.

If you do, please let me know what happened. What was it like? Did Bell鈥檚 and Fritscher鈥檚 art help you see the world in a fresh way? If it鈥檚 a colossal waste of time, you can tell me that, too. 

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the 近距离内射合集. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .