Artists: Shelby Jackson and Paul Gondry
Exhibition title: Shpongle
Venue: 15 Orient, New York, US
Date: May 13 – June 20, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and 15 Orient, New York
“Environment and setting still have a great influence upon one; there is something about them which stamps itself firmly and deeply in memory, or rather upon the whole soul, and which is therefore never forgotten. However old I may become, it will always be impossible for me to think of Cordelia amid sourounding different from this little room. When I come to visit her the maid admits me to the hall; Cordelia herself comes in from her room, she opens her door, so that our eyes meet exactly in the doorway. The living room is small, comfortable, little more than a cabinet. Although I have seen it from many different view-points, the one dearest to me is the view from the sofa. She sits there by my side; in front of us stands a round tea table, over which is draped a rich table cloth. On the table stands a lamp shaped like a flower, which shoots up vigorously to bear its crown, over which a delicately cut paper shade hangs down so lightly that it is never still. The form of the lamp reminds one of oriental lands, the movement of the shade of mild oriental breezes. The floor is concealed by a carpet woven from a certain kind of osier, which immediately betrays its foreign origin. For the moment I let the lamp become the keynote of my landscape. I am sitting there with her outstretched on the ground, under this wonderful flower. At other times I let the osier rug evoke ideas about a ship, about an officer’s cabin—we sail out into the middle of the great ocean. When we sit at a distance from the window, we gaze directly into heaven’s vast horizon … Cordelia’s environment must have no foreground, but only the infinite boldness of far horizons. She must not be of the earth, but ethereal, not walking but flying, not forward and back, but everlastingly forward.”
Adorno cites a passage from Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Seducer in the context of his discussion of the 19th century “bourgeois intérieur”. See the section titled, “Constitution of Inwardness” in Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic.
On view:
Little Thumbling Prinkle Perc Gizmoid Water Piper Alberick Nymph Vape Nimble Tramp Swamp Fairy Backsplash Guard Crystal Mag Spiral gloids with Schrumm Coil Night Hag (Bunk) Typical Street Shpongle Little Boy Blue (Blue belly) Dust of Emet Freezable Nibelung Ring K-17 Chelm seeds (Squonk) Dual Function Incubus Bubbler Cratalus with Detachable Coil System Gryphius Vulture (Buzzard Dust) The Lutist of Blooming Grove Penny-Bun Pumpkin Eater Oiagros with Red Callus Attachments Miss Muffet Clay Boy Atomizer Donko Nut Carriage with Honeycomb Perc Nebachanezer
