world in the crack
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Let us examine the matter closer. The crack divides the fine-grained from the coarse-grained asphalt, and you might say, so what?
For dividing these realms of different crudenesses, it would have been sufficient (Dayenu!) to install a domain of plain, bland, texture-less material, but no: the sophistication of this piece of art is such that it cannot tolerate the absence of meaning at any spot — in a sense cast widely.
So instead we see glyphs hinting at the scripts of antiquity, although this is a matter of much extra thought and interpretation. Comparing the glyphs with the inscriptions on ancient Chinese divination turtle shells alone would be a fertile subject of a dissertation.
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As we go down from top, we encounter an area of doodling (and I do not use the term lightly, although it indicates, admittedly, a lack of other things to say), which is followed by parallel wavy lines that invoke Starbucks with its ubiquitous mermaids, and thrown in is even a cursory glance, it seems, of exactly one eye since part of the attempted face is hidden by the smooth side of the asphalt. We have then, going further down, a region of despair where the mermaid theme is abandoned and nothing else has taken its place.
But then soon we see glyphs hinting at the force of the pictorial; we see what seems to be a baby or a beetle — there is no way to tell, since the scale is not provided here. Emerging post-mermaids things take shape, something whipped, a head perhaps? There is suddenly much fuzziness, a profusion of hair?
As we arrive at the bottom we feel enriched by the experience, as with all all increments of creative exploration at MOMA, at the Whitney, at the Guggenheim and everywhere up and down Museum Avenue.
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❤️