Strands that hold will one day pull apart 
May - July 2024

Solo show at Too Big Roof in Northampton, MA 

more info and more photos at toobigroof.com

Documentation by Cole Cataneo


The knots that hold the strands together will one day pull apart like a harmony sung by two voices which is inevitably interrupted by a breath taken or a pitch wavering like the gravity that holds our planet precisely the distance from the sun necessary for the trees that grow and oceans that churn to cradle human life like the bacterial flora that permeates every inch of flesh both inside and out like friendships like the economies of nations like the economies of individuals like buildings made of wood and bricks like the language we commune with and hope continues to carry our intentions accurately between separate consciousnesses.

I put two sheets of paper in a room and you can consider the ubiquity of just the 8.5x11 rectangle. You can consider the meaning of just the form versus what gets printed on the paper versus something in between. You can consider what meanings are possible and what meanings are impossible with this form and with the potential printing on the form. You can consider the limits of language printed on the form.

I sliced the two sheets of paper by hand with an x-acto knife. I left the slices of one sheet connected as a continuous spiral by using tiny incisions, and place it on a pedestal in a tangled knot. The new form of the sheet can be lyrical in the way cursive writing is lyrical. It can be lyrical in the way a sheet of paper lazily falling from a rooftop caught by a breeze can be lyrical. I think it’s lyrical in these ways. I sliced the other sheet into many narrow, disconnected strands. Then I tied those strands together with tiny knots into a long strand that is almost impossible to keep from getting snarled into itself. The knots can easily untie by themselves and the individual strands can easily snap with too much force. The delicateness and tenuousness of these gestures, and of these new forms, can be beautiful. I think they’re beautiful. They can have a “soft” meaning that eschews language. The beauty can come from a slippage that happens between language’s attempted codification and the actual, ever shifting, nature of what it attempts to fix, namely, the relations that make up reality.

The room has two windows, and walls that aren’t quite white. One of the windows has a potted spider plant sitting on it. You may find that the paper looks almost invisible on the walls despite the difference in color. The paper casts shadows that are almost like reflections. The paper sits in the room, day by day, sometimes shifting in the breeze of someone walking past, or from the open window, if the window is open. Someone might walk by the door to the room. Someone might close the door to the room. Someone sleeps in the room next to the room. Someone eats and talks in the room next to the room where someone sleeps. The street is not visible from the room. You can go into the room by appointment only but you can go into it for an indefinite but not infinite interval of time. The paper is in the room for an indefinite but not infinite interval of time. The room is in Northampton, Massachusetts.