OBJECT PERMANENCE AT SULK CHICAGO

Object permanence is a child’s ability to know that things keep existing even when they cannot be sensed. Infants under a certain age believe objects are gone forever when held behind the back. It is a special time, before the inner-voice, when baby’s thoughts are pure sensation. In less than a year of life, representational thoughts emerge so we can symbolically imagine that which cannot be seen.

Simple games let us practice our new skill. When you know something is hiding, you can seek it. Lose something precious and be delighted to find it again. We could think that a thing is only granted reality through our sensing of it (tree falls in a forest). The concept is innocent: surely things wouldn’t want to be there without me.. a sound that I missed is no sound at all.

I know enough to return to my bed in the dark but wake up not sure which way I’m oriented. I want to believe my field of vision is a rectangle but it’s two circles that overlap. The self-assured mind fills in gaps of information so emphatically that the artist needs a reminder to draw what they see and not what they think they see.

My purse is a performance of my having things. I am always laying down a big bag of stuff on a table and asking people if they’re bringing their stuff and if not where should we leave it for now. Little you emerges with nothing and the acquisition of things happens throughout your life.. There is a futility of objects in times of turmoil when I look at them in their stillness and think it must be so uncomplicated.

I can love my belongings better when I remember their instability. Knowing a favorite cup will break makes me more apt to use it. Better to believe that things at their start are already on their way out. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Object permanence is a collection of paintings that let the very young mind reemerge. In them, space and depth are allowed to be confused when things undergo a series of visual tricks. The paintings still want to reveal patterns and items arrange themselves accordingly. That which we are certain of is made extremely clear by sitting in more inconclusive spaces. Recognizable things bound in atmosphere as they would in life.. pretend if physics flattened and image-making knelt. Absence is made visible through what is kept private. The wish is that the paintings reveal the nature of another dimension by working in images of the well known 3.