Renata Berdes - Veronica Cuculich - David Espinosa - Ted Gram-Boarini - Myat Moondog Haggart - Stefan Harhaj - Dan Miller - Brian Reed - Tim Stone
July 12, 2005
Dear Skin,
Yesterday does not leave. It stays, stretched across the sheets, shifting where it should remain. The folds are where they always were, but they are not the same. The fabric holds more, or perhaps less. My fingers trace them, though they slip between something ungraspable—mine, but not mine. You hold them differently. Do you feel it? The way they settle, the way they resist being named? The air does not change, and yet, it tastes like something it has not been before.
The room arrives before I enter it. The table is unchanged but heavier now, as if the dust has gathered into something heavier. It has taken on a form, or maybe a memory, or maybe a question. I think of writing my name, but the thought does not finish. The table has been waiting, it notices.
The light bends at an angle I have seen before. The walls hold their place, but the space between them is unfamiliar. Not smaller, not larger—only shifting at the edges, only waiting to be measured.
***
May 20, 2012
Dear Skin,
I wake, Yesterday pressed onto me. The sheets crease, but not as they did before. Or exactly as they did before. The lines fall elsewhere. My fingers follow them, slow, then quick. Too slow. Too quick. The air does not press, does not lift. It does not move. Or it does. Or I do.
I arrive before I walk. The table is here, but it waits differently. It does not settle. The dust does not settle.It collects, folds into itself, edges forming where there were none before. Or there were. Or there always have been. The dust holds something, something between us, something that has neither begun nor ended.I write my name. I recognize it. I do not recognize it. It is there. It is not there.
The walls do not press, but the space between them moves. I have been here before. The corners are softer. The light has shifted. It has always shifted like this. Hasn’t it?
**
September 16, 2020
Dear Skin,
Yesterday stays. No, it presses. No, it thins. The sheets hold something I do not remember giving them.Or they give me something I do not remember holding. My fingers trace the folds deliberately. They are mine. They are not mine. They never were.
The table is not the same. Or it is. Or it never was. The dust does not settle. The dust is not dust. The lines remain, but they do not remain where they should. Or they do. Or they never needed to. You feel it too, don’t you? The way things shift without shifting, hold without holding? Hold? Hold what?
The space does not answer, but it listens. The walls shift when I turn away, but when I look again, they are not where they were. They are not where they were. They were never where they were. The table in the corner is clean. The table in the corner is clean. The table is in the corner. The table is. There is nothing left to hold.
*
November 11, 2029
Dear Skin,
Yesterday does not leave. Yesterday does not stay. Yesterday is not. The sheets are not pressed. They do not hold. They are only there. They were always there. They were never there.
The table holds nothing now. Or everything. Or something that was never meant to be held. The dust does not move, yet it remains. The lines have fallen, but they do not fall. There is no name to write. There is no name. There is no.
The walls are the walls. The walls are. The room is. The space between them is space. The space does not shift. It does not shift. It does not. It does not need to.
There is nothing else.
Öykü Kolat is an arts organizer and writer living between Chicago and Istanbul, Turkey. She writes for KAFKAOKUR and Öykü Gazetesi and has guest curated shows at Salt and Pilot Galeri in Istanbul. Previously, she held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Monique Meloche Gallery. She received her BA in Art History from Columbia College Chicago in 2021.
Opening reception:
February 7th, 2025
5:00 - 8:00
Guest curator hours/walk through:
March 7th, 2025
6:00 - 8:00 walk through at 7:00
*****Special thanks to Intuit Art Museum for helping make this exhibition possible.
Image:
Veronica "Ronnie" Cuculich
Photograph Girl, 2009
Multi media on wood
13 ½ x 13 in.
34.3 x 33 cm.
(VC_21)
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