The high ceilings and exposed brick of a former factory boiler room somehow provide a fitting space for John Stoney’s latest work. His muted, prehistoric palette would drown in the harsh sterile light of most contemporary art galleries. At The Boiler’s current exhibition Stay close to me, it will be dark soon, Stoney ambitiously and poignantly bridges the incomprehensible gap between the individual and vast geological time.
In “The Speed of the Earth Series” Stoney creates videos of the cosmos from locations central to his life—Texas, Brooklyn, upstate New York—highlighting that each degree of latitude on the Earth’s surface travels at a different speed. “Midway Clock” is a video of Jupiter’s real-time movement across the Texan sky on the artist’s 45th birthday.
As Stoney etches galaxies, planets, and stars into chipboard, the raised byproducts create the illusion of stardust. In his own words: “The show is about, at midlife, looking to the sky for perspective. It’s about the night and all its grandiloquences on mortality and significance, and how all it purports can’t compete with the tenor of daily life, of birds waking up, and of thoughtful decisions on the comparative qualities of kitty litter.”
Stay close to me, it will be dark soon is now on view at The Boiler in Williamsburg until October 9th.
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