Dear Jason,

To anticipate an exhibition by you in the gallery has always given me an unusual sense of exhilaration. A sensation similar for me to staring out at the ocean – giving me space to think about phenomena that I cannot experience but that I know exist. It is exciting, but in an uncertain way. Uncertain because I tell part of the story, which is not clear until the moment that it happens.

Hence,
We are the meeting.
In the last exhibition at the gallery, you connected a copper pipe in the main space to the water supply for the gallery and ran it out into the center of the room. At the end of the pipe was something similar to a hose crank handle and a small paper tag attached to the pipe that read, “Build a great Aquarium”. A few years later the gallery flooded and was destroyed. Years of work and the lives of many paintings, sculptures, documents, ephemera, prints, photographs, writing, and more were lost. These objects had so much history, and so much potential. The history of the space changed in a surge, flowing in and out, like a breath. We all think about it differently, remember it differently, and a different energy now persists.

Seeing aquariums in the space will be hard. Drawing a line around the electrical charge of the space gives visual and physical life to this energetic presence. Smoke from the chimney is absent, and the sky is turned on its side. Voices and sounds from Mongolia, Georgia, Israel and Brazil, will be trapped inside devices that send them across oceans, forests, deserts and skies, and the gallery itself will breathe light instead of water, from rose to white, white to rose.
A hint of Optimism…
I just read this in Matthew Dickman’s poem:

“A Buddhist monk will wake up early on Sunday morning and not be a fork and not be a knife, he will look down at the girl sleeping in his bed like a body of water, he will think about how he lifted her up like a spoon to his mouth all night, and walk into the courtyard and pick up the shears and cut a little part of me, and lie me down next to her mouth which is breathing heavily and changing all the dark in the room to light.”

It is so beautiful.
I can’t wait, thanks Jason.

Love, L

Reading with Fivehundred Places: Saturday, January 11, 4pm
The gallery will hold a reading in collaboration with Fivehundred Places, a new poetry press established by Jason Dodge in Berlin in order to promote a dialogue between contemporary art and poetry. Participating poets include: Caroline Knox, Susan Wheeler, M.A. Viszolyi, Anna Mcdonald, Michael Dickman and Dorothea Lasky.

Jason Dodge’s work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, on view through January 26. Dodge additionally published a two-volume catalogue with the Henry Art Gallery including a book of letters between Dodge and poet Matthew Dickman. In 2013, Dodge participated in the 12th Biennale de Lyon, the 9th Bienal do Mercosul, and oO, the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include The American Academy in Rome, Rome, 2013, LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz, 2013, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg, 2012, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania, 2011, I woke up. There was a note in my pocket explaining what had happened, Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, traveled to La Galerie, Noisy le Sec, France (2010).