HORIZON works - Alex Selenitsch
HORIZON works – exhibition by Alex Selenitch, grahame galleries + editions, 26 October to 23 November 2013.
LHS: HORIZON thru & thru 2009
RHS: Z-HORIZON, attached 2007-2013
HORIZON works
grahame galleries + editions
26 October to 23 November 2013
My HORIZON works began from the observation that scanning a horizon and reading a line of text, or even a longish word, might be similar. The word itself was in my mind because of Sweeney Reed’s versions, in particular, the metal one which I installed in Ruth Cowen’s apartment. My HORIZONs are a continuation of Sweeney’s, even though he probably never considered his own poems as an unfinished set. My use of the word takes it into different subjects as well.
I began with a group of HORIZON pieces for a travelling show called Script, curated by Angela Cavalieri. My rule was to make three new works for each venue, which I did for five venues after the first showing at Mass Gallery, Melbourne, in 2002. All of these works were images of reading from left to right, placed across a flat surface. Some used the word ‘horizon’, others implied one through a scatter of letters and numbers.
Later works move the word into three-dimensional space. Instead of reading across or along the HORIZON, they ask the viewer to read around, over to, at, towards and through the HORIZON. Materiality has also been influential. Vinyl, perspex and access to laser cutting, a project at the Melbourne Museum of Printing involving a large letterpress machine, the easy copy/paste/alter functions of the computer: all of these have pushed the horizon further and further away, or perhaps, have revealed new horizons to scan. The closer you get to a horizon, the further it moves away. I no longer see the project as a set that can be finished, but as a continuous project, with completion always out of reach.
View the exhibition at grahame galleries + editions.