You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
Marius Bercea
Untitled (Boy who imitates sunset), 2025
Oil on paper, 23.3 × 16.6 inch
Jecza Gallery at Untitled Art Fair
Autograph is the small press of JOAN, an experimental exhibition space in Los Angeles, documenting expressions that arise from new imaginings: alternative histories, cosmologies, and systems of release.
a reminder of what has endured
what has always been
what is now ready to be seen.
Gender Euphoria and the Superbloom, Jennifer Huang
In the novel I’m reading, a cowboy
dies, dies, of snakes in a river.
He was really a boy, a child
who cried and sang Irish lullabies.
Look at a River, Elisa, Elisa Gabbert
A composite, not quite a chimera. (Send it back!)
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppress’d with melancholy;
Until life’s composition be recurred
By those swift messengers return’d from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:
This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,
I send them back again and straight grow sad.
(Sonnet 45), William Shakespeare
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! Thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.
(Sonnet 27), William Shakespeare
Seung Ah Paik (b. 1979, Seoul, Korea) lives and works in Pittsburgh, USA. Gratin. Rubell Museum.
Body Cartography represents skin and the human body as tangible, living records–each blemish, wrinkle, or callous signifying the passage of time. These topographical markers connect moments in time to physical sites of transformation, transfiguring skin into what Paik terms “emotional terrain.” Paik is by no means new to the practice of morphing body and landscape, however. Her paintings serve as testament to the inextricable bond between nature and humanity, gradually eroding this barrier until her paintings become physical maps. With wrinkles as trajectories charting growth and defined lines suggestive of boundaries, the human form self-records its age while becoming a metaphor for external landscapes.
[…]
Paik seamlessly transforms that which is internal into external corporeal maps, meant to be followed and understood as one’s own. She does exactly that by painting entangled limbs and sloping breasts from obscure perspectives, presenting the illusion of looking down on one’s own body to establish a sense of familiarity. Paik reconstructs her body as a collection of objects observed from disjointed angles, complicating relationships between artist, viewer, and the created image.
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.
– Keats
[…]
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
Endymion, Book I, [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever], John Keats