Famous Accountants: Obsession

 

A sort of rosary, or mala bead necklace―but of paper cut letters on an architectural scale―Obsession is a 5-strand plaited net of text embracing the interior of the main gallery at Famous Accountants in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Cut from the Koran, but spelling the entire New Testament Book of Revelation, visitors to the installation will take away excerpts on the places and spaces, symbols and facts of possible apocalypse usual to many spiritual books.  When the conceptual religiosity of the piece is not immediate, the meditative patience required for its execution is striking; its initial invisibility belies a universal scope.

Typically working on paper to build small castles, mandalas, or intuitive streams of text, for her first full-scale installation Brooklyn-based artist Meg Hitchcock reclaims reading and writing from their exile to purely ideal realms to welcome collusions of matter and spirit. An artist of extreme finitude, detail and subtlety, Hitchcock expresses the incredible power required to proceed always carefully, with consistent pace, grace and interest. Sometimes, major phenomena are those you can’t see.  And somehow that’s like how  the terrific omniscience of the sublime is found on the edge of boredom.

Nowhere near spectacle―not even at first completely apparent―sometimes great work doesn’t hit you over the head, until you’re entirely within its midst. Look out for Hitchcock’s coming installation at the Bronx Museum.

sb 03 2011

Tags: art, Butler, contemporary, exhibition, Hitchcock, media, Meg, Sarah