Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Catalina Ouyang at Lyles & King


Like Scifi, charred and melted. Like Matthew Barney's Silent Hill. Like a phantasm gone bad. Spoiled fantasy. A darker more evil drawing. An oil painting of your mother dead for her 60th birthday. 60 candles burning.  Blood letting to amuse guests. Asking god to hit you. Not asking about certain stains on your boyfriend's sheets. Oh this clown suit? No. A specific detail no one asked for. A dog no one remembers missing. A shelf full of books documenting a very specific historical massacre. Christmas. Wounds before penicillin. Burial grounds for the French. You open the door to find a wiggling mass. Wetness spreading. Lawnskeeper's sheds. European forests. Men in colonial uniforms. Puritans. Deformed by primitive science. The dark unbridled night. Children in wet coats. Forced to carry their young. Trees that have done unspeakable things. The town's records placed into a coal fire. Vast quantities of underground earth moved. Children lost to mines. Civil war bone saws. Early submarines. Comfort homes. History's bruise. Folktales become truth. Deer with a misaligned face. Horns of plenty.