Low Relief
15 November - 15 December 2024
“Red and the bull; black and the sadness”
-Le Corbusier & Ozenfant
The parking lots on Florist at Juniper, Clarion, Summer, and Camac interest me little. And little do the pavements that smell of rotting flesh and dirty water on Tenth. I like to smoke among the swishing chatter by the firehouse as the benches fill. But since visual art is primarily visual, the material selection must accord with what the eye sees first.
A material is useful to the extent that it produces an attitude of color from which proportion takes form to change space. Surface,1 condition,2 proximity,3 abundance,4 and availability5 at no cost are secondary confrontations. Newspapers and advertisements are distrusted for their literary and commercial complications. Photographs are too specific in the wrong way.
Stubs, tags, tickets, placards, receipts, notices, and some packaging of clear and direct color compose more general shapes, usually blocks, sometimes open or without corners. Only simple and productive modifications allow for more powerful arrangements. Universal forms of strong color provide a plastic base on which sensitive actors play.
Fourteen works of low relief are shown here because I made them here, I live here, and because the rent is still cheap. The work is bagged in clear plastic and taped to the walls for daytime viewing. The exhibition is not a comment on the last neighborhood in town; it is of it.
Ben Lotka
1 November 2024 Philadelphia
1. Surface (tooth, print, perforation)
2. Condition (sun, rain, tire tread)
3. Proximity (wind, fencing, boundary)
4. Abundance (date, hour, clean-up effort)
5. Availability (loss, litter, vigilance)