Think of Salad Days: Group exhibition | Curated by Priscilla Vail Caldwell & Joe Fyfe

Hannah Beerman              Bennett Smith

Jimi Kabela                          Will Thurman
Liam Lee                             Alix Van Der Donckt-Ferrand
Olivia Marwell                    Cullen Washington Jr.
Nhật Minh

Think of salad days

They were folly and fun

They were good, they were young

Think we’ll destabilize, it’s urgent…challenge the structures that sustain racism, sexism, militarism, and bourgeois heteronormativity—we have the skill to take it on here…the above are the sole lyrics of the 2 minute song by the Young Marble Giants: indexing an influential band on their one & only album (ever heard of “albums”?) Colossal Youth.  

Think that one said they always made “music for evenings” that is, its quietness, its…Mark Fisher’s “slow cancellation of the future…” life on the planet in its “late” period… it’s always evening now… the first paintings made in the darkness of caves…Cullen Washington, Jr. ’s creation myth walks out into the savannah & the ancient dusk. Vito Acconci said “it’s always night in the city” now it’s always night on earth…

Think that we might be the last creatures like us to be here but there is no real night no enclosure in darkness & we look for it. Bennett Smith’s grasping binder claws if the heart be chrome within a black Newman zip…or if the near future descends in folds like Nhật Minh’s lost shadowy handkerchief blanketing the floor & the wall…

Think of intransigence, contradiction. Liam Lee saw the Covid time as when “our homes and bodies became focal points of safety and anxiety, protecting us from the outside world”…this is all waking sleep…roofers outside my window, floors below, the sound of the torch, years previous the smell of asphalt only encountered on the street.

Think a vexed threshold crossed Hannah Beerman invites Jack Spicer’s spirits in to help… acceptance of life and benevolence of spirit never comes knocking. Jimi Kabela & African money into oil dollars & Olivia Marwell a structure of feeling? are we seeing a pattern or merely an appearance of mothers and aunts certain humans are situations, it put me through school. one of them (her) became a chiropractor. My favorite line (she sang) is “lubricate the enema” 

Think of our glowing optimism daunting morning Alix van Der Donckt-Ferrand’s santeria of the quotidian object Will Thurman: “from a place that isn’t a place until it’s understood by the terms of its misplace-mentedness. only then can it be seen…” large lumps of blotches over crayoned cartoons… Duino Elegies: “For beauty is nothing but/the beginning of terror”