Devon Dikeou
Things You Can't Remember, To Things You Can't Forget
1993

My installations in Things You Can't Remember, To Things You Can't Forget are subtle attempts at infiltrating the traditional viewing space and the expected experience normal to a viewing audience.

The first piece is the replication of a summer porch screen door which the viewer must enter, in order to access the main gallery. Acting not as a barricade to the show, but rather as a portal, the inlet porch is hardly visually impairing or physically sufficient to veil the space that separates a viewer from the work, yet logistically necessary to access it. The screen is an apparition of separation, rendering the latent sound of the creaking springs as passage is initiated, in a subtle activation of the metaphoric space between the artwork, viewer and artist. Cited from the last stanza of an Emily Dickinson poem So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar, That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance, Despair! the title implies the emotional and physical separation inherent in the screen inference, as well as an exaggerated hope of recognition. The recognition however, seems as hollow as the allusion to the summer as the screen cackles behind the viewer, reminding them that the days are shortening and of the impending weariness of winter.