maybe you need time for your eyes to adjust to the dark

“I invite you to see the explosion of color in this exhibition as an alchemy of darkness. Armando Román and Michelle Chun’s mark-making practices trace and triangulate spirits, minds, and bodies. To represent these as co-equal is rare within the contemporary landscape.

The title of the exhibition is an excerpt of dialogue from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Weerasethakul dissolves the categories of human animal man and woman within the darkness of the cinema; art becomes witness to the testimony of the numinous.

Similarly, the profusion of color and agility of form I encounter in Roman and Chun’s work dissolve the clinical divide between “representation” and “revelation.” Lingering before these pieces, I am disoriented and unmoored from a vision of myself as a hermetically-sealed individual. The sum of these gestures is a series of moments in which otherness is rendered perceptible. Such moments invite us to exchange clarity for mystery, surety for fluidity, and control for communion.”

- Christian Gonzalez Ho