Bob Dylan once said “The purpose of art is to stop time.” Capturing a moment in time may be the gift of the artist; however, how many moments embedded in an artwork are referred yet unseen? View the exhibition online.
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September 8, 2021: How does an artist capture the passage of time? Is it the shredded memories embedded in the paintings of Pamela Gibson, or each pin prick punctured on paper by Fu Xiaotong? A new exhibition at Shari Brownfield Fine Art titled Time Takes Time honors the relationship between artist and the ephemerality of the present moment. Featuring two artists working in vastly different mediums and processes, both express the flow of time in their completed works, as well as the slowing of time through their own distinctive practices.
Working in Beijing, paper artist Fu Xiaotong honors the endless evolution of our landscape that goes unseen but is constantly at play. The artist memorializes the passage of time in both practice and subject matter through repeated punctures on handmade paper with a tiny pin, creating an accumulation of hundreds of thousands of pin pricks. Together these miniscule holes form a low relief of light and shadow from which majestic mountainscapes emerge. Individually, each pin prick might be considered inconsequential, much like a single grain eroding from the mountains; however, the accumulation of these countless punctures is a direct record of elapsed time.
To create her luminous encaustic paintings, Pamela Gibson embeds objects, including what she calls “shredded memories” in the thirty to forty layers of hot wax. These bits of ephemera are part of the artist’s process of reflection and introspection, as well as an attempt to honor or preserve a special moment that once existed. GIbson will often scrape back layers, as though returning in time to something that once was. Gibson’s abstractions are informed by the landscape, and often refer to fleeting moments - such as the way the sun hits a budding green aspen leaf. While these special moments are preserved in her paintings, they disappear in actual time, flowing to the next moment. Much like the work of Fu Xiaotong, what we may see as fixed is constantly evolving.
Capturing the ambiguity and constant flow of the present moment is the challenge these artists pursue. Gibson and Fu perceive and present how time takes time to form all that we know.
Time Takes Time opens during Fall Arts Festival on September 8 and will remain on view through November 12, 2021. An opening will be announced depending on the Covid situation in Teton County at the time.