"ABOVE THE CLOUDS" BY LINUS ELMES
If I were curator for the next Daniel Lergon exhibition I’d declare that it was going to take place above the clouds. Considering ’exhibition’ is a word that means everything or nothing, this is where it belongs. Close to the sun.When Walter Hopps mounted works by Mark Rothko on a merry-go-round at Santa Monica Pier, he proved space is not just where things happen: things make space happen. And this is a highly relevant insight in relation to my proposed display of Daniel Lergon’s work. There’s a particular personal relationship internalised in and materialized through his work. He makes use of perceptive mechanisms and visual phenomena such as luminescence and retroreflection, allowing us to spotlight ourselves as well as the surrounding world whilst time modifying our notion of the state of things.
In the atmosphere, radiation, temperature and oxygen levels differ. A little further out towards space, gravity changes too. Briefly, my proposal for this extraordinary context is intended to offer the viewer a gateway to a field of metaphoric aspects. Weightless observers become aware of themselves as breathless spectators, shoulder to shoulder with Helios, among migratory birds and astronauts. Perceiving and registering, affected by the atmosphere and the altitude.
I will now cast light upon the centerpieces of this exhibition - the paintings that make use of colours, transforming photon by photon ultraviolet light, belonging to the invisible spectrum, into visible light. Emphasizing implications of light as a further metaphor. The Norwegian art historian Erland Hammer has summarized this beautifully: “In the first three verses of Genesis we find the roots to nearly all of Western philosophy. Embedded in the notion of ‘creation’ understood as a ‘something’ that arises from a ‘nothing’, we find the Platonic world view that would later reach its peak in the form of Cartesian dualism; the schism between body and mind, thought and matter and all that stuff.” I think I’ll let him write the catalogue.