Randy Wray

Scouring

Theodora Allen, Chino Amobi, Joseph Beuys, Madeline Casteel, Dachi Cole, Hamishi Farah, Sylvie Fleury, Sophie Friedman-Pappas, Maggie Lee, Liz Magor, Win McCarthy, Beaux Mendes, Josef Strau, and Randy Wray

Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, NY, June 4 - July 16, 2022

The puzzle box was designed exactly like the building complex I was in. The frequent turns and corners, the high-ceilinged hallways and domed chambers, the harsh angles and narrow stairwells; all of this could be seen inside the puzzle if I were to smash it open with a hammer, yet, if it were smashed, the similarities would vanish until the buildings were demolished too. The structures in the complex were all concrete, so blue and cold they might melt in the sun like ice. In my hands, skin warmed the puzzle’s rust-worn metal.

Then I was sleepwalking in a cavern, teeth chattering, harmless water bullets launching from stalactite ends into weathered pockets on the ground. My mouth’s inside was burning, cheeks and tongue and gums as hot as loose electricity from a broken wire. If my jaw could unclench enough to let me scream there would have been an echo throughout the deep hollow so resonant it would not end before I did. But there was no echo because my jaw was clenched and my tongue was hot and my teeth were chattering. Running my hand over the wall while I ran my tongue across my teeth. Mineral and bone. Sediment and metal crowns. Combing through a library of fossils for one in particular.

A vivid section of cross-eyed antennae singing to life in the world. An animal trapped in a frame on a table. Dark matter redirecting patterns of orbit. God is a lepidopterist who uses clear gravity in place of gray and silver needles to pin his subjects. What will finally happen when he releases all constraints and frees his twitching specimens? Rampant biology: Subjects with poison sweat and flowerlike objects whose only venom is their shape. Lacunae in maps become problems for outliers. The inside has an inside too. 
-Amber Later