So, this is something new. But I became really set on trying it.
The following is a piece of poetry I wrote in response to a current exhibition of Iva Gueorguieva at Derek Eller Gallery in New York City. Gueorguieva, originally from Bulgaria, is now based in Los Angeles.
The included artworks tend to include acrylic, charcoal, and gauze, and they double as images and collages, the gauze draped across Gueorguieva’s artistic surfaces.
Frankly, I was transfixed. Like, seriously — the artworks are amazing.
The selection of artworks laid out, in each of these instances, an image that was not just accompanied by tactile elements but in its ultimately shared essence also a free-flowing sculpture of sorts, outside of itself from the get-go. I see them as lived images in multiple places, multiple times, and maybe even multiple, entire incarnations at once.
If each artwork points to a cascade of memory in its wistful, panoramic vista, that memory is now present in a way I don’t think we’re used to. It’s as though it’s happening at the same time as the actual present: a captivating artistic achievement.
Pondering the Subway Car's Window
by Valerie Bright, inspired by art from Iva Gueorguieva at Derek Eller Gallery
Sling slung gauze
I see the wall smearing itself against the next one and talking in a language I can’t quite
The cabineted television's voices. Fingerprints in the dust:
The stormclouds are pushing against
Enshrined seashells and the stench of the light the
Salty stench of the light reeks and pulses and tremors and
Moments.
Cabinetry dissolves and dissolves and dissolves and
Dissolves cabinetry and dissolves
Creaking and wrenching floorboards and empty suitcases, and Pine branches the size of a car thudding into the earthen orchestra stage
Stepping into the rusted, hulking harbor
Now that’s what I call music!
I watch "The Price is Right" sermon intently. I imagine myself in the football field.
I can smell what I
It’s okay.
There’s not really a word.
Standing in front of the torn screen door and the glass and the
Watching the walls from outside, wondering and wandering away.
The house is preaching at me.
Textures of its paneled ceiling always so.
Always so away.
I tried to see my
Reflection in the ceiling. And in the
Grocery Store.
The light is on between the buildings, and I think it’s
Looking at me.
Was it
Looking at me
Before? The hulking, angel trees, they seem illuminated. together against the
Searing Night. Viewed from the museum mezzanine.
I’m not sure who it is -- yes I am -- but the memories alight here this is your stop. I remember finding and looking and the
Textures the woman in my dreams who I knew but didn't Recognize.
Oh, how achingly beautiful it is to know!
Boxed recipe cards and the shadowed stovetop and the yellow, plastic garbage can. Round, at odds with the floor.
The pressing glances.
Encroached upon by encircling walls entirely indifferent
The sidewalk on the street corner jars my legs. So I throw my painted, popcorn kernel wishes into the volley of ocean waves. Which pushes them back towards
Me.
I find some of them in the paintings that were on the wall in front of me and are now on the next internet browser tab over.
I'm wishing into the subway entrance and
Blinking into the window pane at the coffee shop
Stepping off into the car ride through downtown, downtown
So many staircases
I'm blinking into the telephone walls, and leaning back into theater seats, and dressing up as a light fixture, and watching in the basement at the Museum of Modern Art.
Except, it's not actually a basement, it's just an art installation made to look like a
Basement.
and I'm missing a place while I'm standing in the middle of it.
Cascading palatial broken down book covers suddenly suddenly suddenly, a lamp flickers
On.
What beautiful, anonymous organ music snakes up the railing!
How enriching to find a face of the sun itself as a companion for the trek!
Such illumination, blanketing and covering and pushing forward and washing over
Every step, and
Every step not made, and
Every step imagined and cultivated, and each placement and direction and street sign and place marker and candy shop
The light fixture winks kindly.
This exhibition of Iva Gueorguieva at Derek Eller Gallery -- entitled "Gallop, to retrieve the sunlight!" -- continues through July 11.
