How many labors of the human imagination do you suppose have been lost to us over time? Poems, sculptures, paintings, and even films that we’ll never know or see. Plenty of artworks are safely entombed in museums, but others are lost to us forever, casualties of natural disasters, time, or the vagaries of taste. In some cases, we can follow shadowy trails only to find they lead to … nowhere. Or else, we interpret fragments, piecing them together to create a whole that may or may not have a relationship to the original.
As an example, consider this poem, constructed from fragments attributed to the ancient Greek poet Sappho: “With his venom/irresistible and bittersweet/that loosener/of limbs, Love/reptile-like/strikes me down.” Maybe the phrase “irresistible and bittersweet” refers to a really delicious pomegranate she ate and not painful love, as is implied here. If Sappho even penned these lines. If she even really existed.
The only thing we know, to butcher Socrates, is that we don’t really know.
You might think this line of thinking would be so depressing as to discourage artists from even bothering. Why invest time, imagination, emotion into things destined to decay? Then again, the people in our lives are subject to this same bummer of a destiny, yet we don’t sequester ourselves in monasteries by the billions.
So there’s no escaping ‘Time’s winged chariot,’ as Andrew Marvel put it in “To His Coy Mistress,” his entreaty to a pretty young thing to get with him before time mugs her of her attractiveness. So what do we do about it?
One Connecticut-based artist’s work has a compelling and courageous take on mortality. James Grashow created a room-sized sculpture from corrugated cardboard that, on Sunday, will travel to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where it will be deposited into time’s remorseless embrace.
From the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum cordially invites you to a reception on Sunday, April 1 from 3 to 5 p.m. in celebration of the exhibition James Grashow: Corrugated Fountain. Join us for the final presentation of this enormous cardboard sculpture inspired by Bernini’s famous Trevi Fountain in Rome. Grashow believes that “creation and destruction are married to each other,” so the work will be installed outdoors on The Aldrich’s front terrace where it will weather and disintegrate.
Visitors will have the opportunity to participate in Grashow's project Accumulated Wishes by recording their hopes and dreams on special coins designed by the artist and then tossing them into the Fountain at the Museum.
Excerpts from a documentary chronicling Grashow and Corrugated Fountain by noted filmmaker Olympia Stone of Floating Stone Productions will be on view during the exhibition.
The exhibition will be accompanied by two Aldrich Editions—a cardboard sculpture and a woodblock print that reference imagery from Corrugated Fountain—available for purchase at the Museum Store.
This event is free for members, or included in the price of admission.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main St.
Ridgefield, Conn.
(203) 438-4519
www.aldrichart.org/
Click here to read more about the idea behind “Corrugated Fountain.”