Some Shorter Lines for MARTIN PURYEAR

A few months ago, Martin Puryear asked me to write an essay for a catalogue to accompany an exhibition of his new work at McKee Gallery (May 3 - June 29, 2012). When I went to Martin’s studio to see the sculptures that would appear in the show, the wheels immediately began to turn, and I knew that I could write the essay. In the essay, titled “Looking Back to Move Forward,” there were certain things I felt I needed to do, and some things I could not do. The sculptures continued to work on me, and the wheels kept turning. So here are four further attempts at “language in the vicinity of what it’s talking about,” as Bill Berkson (quoting Carter Ratcliff paraphrasing Robert Smithson) defined criticism. The titles are Martin’s.

The Rest

The rest might ask
What’s at stake
In rolling stock
From a stuck era?

Move on, they’ll say,
But their memories
Will not necessarily
Be loaded with bodies.

Here, the load
Is carefully concealed
In medium and scale,
But vivid, in the making.
The cart rocks back
To lift its tongue
In praise, insubordination,
And hope.

The Rest is history.

Black Cart

A shadow swells
On a scumbled ground,
Civil distortion,
Coming round and around.

A constellation cart
In a darkening sky,
Like a Big Dipper asterism
To the naked eye.

What’s rising
In this form,
In the back of a child’s head,
Heading into a storm?

Scrolling

Light on its feet,
Like a sign.
Only line,
With a little depth,
Suspended in mind,
Over the possibility
Of flight.

The Load

Carrus in a cortege,
Carrying the Angel of History
Forward, looking back,
Unblinking—
A perfectly public sphere
Concealing a concave mirror
In which we see ourselves
Reflected, Etant donnés,
Back into our own
Implicated eyes.