Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have been cut in stone … it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago:—the world being apparently a huge whispering-gallery.
–George Eliot, Middlemarch
Reza Monahan filled Monte Vista Project with neon, stone, video, sound and words in a way that made the tiny space majestic. Stone plaques ringed with neon hoops surround you. The heraldry of it makes them seem like official seals of states not yet United with the others. After a minute, your eyes adjust, and you realize the stones are inscribed with fragments of … a screenplay. Polished stones with inscription have been used for millennia to mark permanently what’s evanescent. Monahan extends the tradition into an uncertain future.
[Image: N.Y. Subway, laser etched marble, neon, electronics, 42"x42"]
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