I cannot describe the moon.
Tonight, brilliant as though
banished, white as my longing,
slow in its swoon, like a psalm,
dear as death and near to it.
How much longer must I wait?
These darkened spheres of sorrow
and reticence suffering
eclipse. To meet you, again,
your lips, but this time in that
dream, another place prescribed.
How shall I describe this fire
within and the electric
shards of a memory grown
wild, a child lost, communing
with an inflammable past,
and the wind which understands
all things? Present, or gone and
forgotten, knowing of soon.
I cannot describe the moon.
Tonight, held hardly harvest,
slightly scalloped like my heart,
still, full of premonition
and forlorn, part quixotic
like queries portending pain.
Your beauty like a violent
death, confounding, and fatal
unto itself. I have thought
of you, stupidly, these times,
endless with weight, and my words
truncated like arrays of
split tears and the wind which will
not understand, rearing its
bent face in trepidation.
Tonight, sensual like my
song, fearless as fate, and prone
to tragedy. Self licensed
for sighing, surreptitious
sometimes, repeating cycles
between affliction and sleep,
some defiant funambule
tracing light. And yet if it
were to rain just now I would
collect the drops in a jar
like fireflies in mid-summer
of drunken accordions.
The beading glass, the tired
cigarette, the watered down
whisky and the tarnished spoons.
How shall I describe? Desire,
and these lips, ripened like prunes.
I cannot describe the moon.
Tonight, sublime syndicate
of an awaking, whispers
of a dawn ephemeral
caching themselves in shadows
almost patient like the East.
This banality pressing
a deadly aneurysm.
Forgive me. Please forgive me
How shall I describe? This thing,
my present longing for you,
alone in my hotel room,
an uncharted continent.
I shall not describe the moon
in a country where longing
no longer means anything,
in such strict absence of bliss.
And the wind which understands
everything, excepting this.
–Matthew Hong / from Exoration
The Blood Moon eclipse is tonight. Let such celestial activity continue to remind us of how spectacular our universe still persists, even despite us. Welcome to summer. Welcome to the 055th edition of Prescriptions. Here is our review of the week in the arts.
Sergio Prego
Art in Motion / An Operative Canon
This exhibition portrays the development of media arts showcasing pioneering works of photography, cinematography, sound art, theater of machines and projections, radiophonic and televisual art. On view through February 10, 2019 at ZKM Center for Art and Media.
Jac Leirner
Addiction / Jac Leirner
Notions of consumption and accumulation of materials gain architectural outlines, defined by lines that tighten space reaching the minimum degree of matter, synthesized to its tinier element. At Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel through July 28, 2018.
Alex Hartley
Alex Hartley / The Houses
Inspired by iconic examples of modernist domestic architecture, Alex Hartley addresses complicated and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward public and private, built and natural environments. Closes tomorrow, July 28, 2018, at Victoria Miro Gallery.
Sofia / Ryan McGinley
Mirror, Mirror / Ryan McGinley
For this project, Ryan McGinley gave subjects a camera, film, and mirrors. The resulting photographs investigate how the camera functions as an increasingly ubiquitous mediator of identity. On view through September 29, 2018 at Team Gallery.
Larry Sultan
Larry Sultan / Swimmers
Larry Sultan’s early painterly underwater photographs from the series Swimmers, which are shown in Europe for the first time, represent a stylistic counterpoint to Sultan’s conceptual works. At Galerie Thomas Zander through August 25, 2018.
Mary Lum, Untitled, 2015
Interventions
Interventions explores the inventive ways in which artists have transformed the photographic print from the transparent support for an image to a material to be physically manipulated. On exhibit through August 24, 2018 at Yancey Richardson Gallery.
Chantal Joffe
RECENT PROFILES
Larry Sultan, whose painterly underwater photographic series is on view at Galerie Thomas Zander; Mary Ellen Bartley, among several participating at Interventions at Yancey Richardson Gallery; Daniel Korzewa with his striking fashion editorial driven pictures inspired by the cinematic form; Ryan McGinley whose project of Mirror, Mirror is on view at Team Gallery; Jac Leirner’s stark macro-style photography explores the notions of consumption at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel; Alex Hartley’s muted images inspired by examples of modernist architecture exhibiting at Victoria Miro Gallery…
