The gallery is opened but there is a pall across the Southland – very low energy people walking about, traffic is much liter, the light everywhere is orange, filtered through a cloud of soot – a black mercedes parked outside the gallery is covered in white flecks, the white jaguar in front of it is speckled with black cinder.
I’m in here looking at some Kenny Harris paintings that have been dropped off for the next show – some collectors are already making appointments to see the work. The paintings are all about light within interior space and to look at them on this eerie day is a revelation, really, as the crisp white light he is able to pour into each room is a stark, bouyant contrast to the absolute nihilism filtering into the Los Angeles basin.
The problem now is resolving just how to light paintings about light. I can’t make much headway when the light pouring into the gallery is almost opposing what should be the light in the space during the show’s run. There is a perma-dusk, a stillness that gets unresolved with the sameness of each translucently-lit minute after maddeningly still minute.
My office does not have windows and the incandescent light here is like an oxygen hose of clarity. The Kenny Harris paintings have transformed into symbolic hope that the perfect light will soon return.
UPDATE: Where I live and where I work, we are miles and miles from these fires, from even the threat of these fires, but the whole geographic area is in the “wake” of it all. Pray for someone else if you must…