Illuminations
April 28 – June 2, 2007

TERRY FOX

ILLUMINATIONS

APRIL 28 – MAY 25

In the works of Terry Fox, text, time, sound, objects, symbol and space are interwoven to such an extent that real space and mental space combine to create a new space. In the interaction of cognitive and sensual experience, forces are set into motion which render perceptible what is beyond comprehension. By virtue of his psychic-physical constitution, the viewer becomes the code-breaker of the world.

Ulli Seegers, Catalogue Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany

Terry Fox, a central participant in the West Coast performance, video, and conceptual art movements emerging in the late 1960’s, developed a new aesthetic that combined the visual arts with text and also explored the properties of sound and its relationship to space. His continuous work is characterized by invented systems, difficult to decipher, and reoccurring motifs that relate to his extreme life-time experiences with deprivation, illness, and being near death. Configurations of the labyrinth and the voyage of the pendulum serve as metaphors for the process of life and death.

In his third solo show at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Terry Fox will exhibit recent installations, sculpture, and drawings based on literature. Using various devices, Fox dismantles the conventional appearance of words in books. The installation, Lever, stretches out lines from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, I TURNED SILENCES AND NIGHTS INTO WORDS I MADE THE WHIRLING WORLD STAND STILL, into a twenty-nine-foot long row of red lettered cards. In the Labyrinth illuminates the central motif from Robbe-Grillet’s novel with the same title to explore the bond between the material world and the world of words and ideas. An example of Fox’s fondness for word games is the drawing, Enigma. Forced to experience the text in order to understand it, the viewer completes the intention of the work, adding what the artist identifies “as its mental dimension.”

With an economy of means, Fox explores the interrelationship of the senses and the concept of synaesthesia. Inspired by Rimbaud’s well-known poem which assigned colors to vowels, Vowels is an installation of cloth and spices that creates a synthesis of fragrances and hues to evoke the subjective world of memories and associations. Works related to sound include Cone of Silence, 2001, a glazed ceramic cone with non-reflective inside surfaces, which represents Fox’s idea of a “silence bearing” object.

Based in Europe since the early 80’s, Terry Fox has exhibited and presented performances in museums throughout Europe and the United States, including documenta and the Venice Biennale. In 1977 he discovered a method to cause piano wire to vibrate longitudinally, an important component of his sound installations. Publications in conjunction with one person exhibitions include: {Re/De} Constructions &c., Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, 2003; 30 Years of Speaking and Writing about Art, Gesellschaft fur Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 2000; Fox: Ataraxia -Works with Sound, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 1998; and Articulations, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia (Traveling), 1992. His works are in major public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany.

There will be a reception on Saturday, April 28 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 – 6:00. Monday by appointment. For more information, contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.