The Bruise

LSS NYC

“The Bruise ”

2024 February 23 to March 31

Long Story Short is pleased to present The Bruise, a group exhibition curated by Richard Wathen, on view from February 23 to March 31, 2024 at 54E Henry St, New York, NY, 10002.

The Bruise showcases a meticulously curated collection of works by talented global artists: Paul Becker, Anna Bjerger, Paul Housley, Reece Jones, Anna Jung Seo, Gideon Rubin, Miho Sato, Nina Silverberg, Jonathan Wateridge, Richard Wathen, Simon Willems, Vicky Wright

The following press release was written by artist and writer: Paul Becker.

What goes through your mind as you work is necessarily elusive, nebulous. All parceled up in a slur of paint, the briefest of passages; ground won, ground instantly surrendered. It is impossible to get an overview because it just doesn’t work that way. Analogy-wise, the closest would be an iridescent school of fish; one thought following on the tail of another in an (at first) reasonable way, then, as things progress, touchstones of thinking and of feeling, getting wilder, getting wider apart, zigzagging.

The thing itself appears more tangible. As though the pain has gone and only the bruise remains. So, crimson turns to magenta, developing into manganese then an impossible blue: the full colour wheel at the edges as it too slowly fades.

Things continue on. Half thoughts partially materialize, the backwaters of image, contradictions, bubbles in the mass. Here is a partial list:

The memory of a childhood fall ramifies into the bite of the perfect apple, segueing into ‘inexactitude’, then ‘elegance’, leading directly to Speak, Memory and the inevitable killing jar. A hesitant yes, in your mind to the idea of bold colouration but deep down you crave all the browns and greys, all the ‘gravy’ in Whistler, or to walk, lantern-lit, through Spilliaert’s Ostend.

Then nothing for a while.

Slowly, a new spark is ground out, a neuron dutifully fires:

Iniquity, moribund English class. Not being able to not paint. ‘Where philosophy ends, art begins’ which segues improbably into ‘No Regrets’ (the Hazlewood version) then (somehow?) Ornament and Crime and that story about Dagobert Peche breaking into Loos’ garden and silently gilding all his apples. Moving up and along from ‘a secret, inarticulate longing’ to the ribbon at Olympia’s throat; this via a Prussian dueling scar, a lurking boy and hands groping in thin air then Max Klinger’s Glove etchings tipping over somehow into Mavis Gallant, ‘sleeping under strange, strange skies’ and the transmogrification of souls, eavesdropping on one’s self, daring not to please and on to inability, compromise and being in a shark’s mouth. Tenacity and ‘the best lack all conviction’, a new boiler and thinking about your dad, then Mon. Hulot lurching unaccountably towards Women as Lovers and onwards. The inhabiting of an unlikely middle ground between far too strange and not strange enough, an operation on your eye and the zoo scene in Bresson’s Balthazar to your child asking for ‘a hole’ for Christmas. Disquisitions on trying not to think again about the war and through the fog of this a meandering tangent eventually reaches Uccello via Sassetta, then rests for a while amongst some random, unconnectedly shaded feelings. From there to the cosmic sadness following the last miscarriage, then problems with the light, to cleaning a palette knife, then, finally, whoever gave the names to clouds, Barbara Loden being cut from The Swimmer, that Chardin House of Cards and a ring you always assumed was cursed.

Then the bruise again, then nothing again, for a while.