Marian Goodman Gallery offered mystery and transcendence through Starless Midnight by Tavares Strachan. The exhibition began with Encyclopedia of Invisibility on a pedestal and a half-piano emerging from the wall, playing a self-generated melody that reverberated throughout the space, as if sending subtle messages through the structure itself.
Across the room, the other half of the piano stood surrounded by dry grass, yellowed dirt, and bright lights—evoking solitude and contrast. Strachan’s work explores themes of cultural displacement, aspiration, and limitation through scientific and cosmic frameworks like astronomy, climatology, and deep-sea exploration. His installations create monumental allegories of identity and understanding, merging art with science and myth.
Born in 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas, and now based between Nassau and New York, Strachan combines complex materials to build atmospheric, immersive environments. One highlight was a room shrouded in dusk-like darkness, reached through a rounded arch. It glowed with three giant star-like structures—or perhaps boards of thousands of pulsing digits—casting pearlescent light. From a distance, the effect was misty and dreamlike, blurring the boundary between celestial and digital.
While I was less taken with the neon lights, which clashed with the precision of his engineered instruments, their dissonance may have been intentional—highlighting contrasts between the organic and synthetic. A self-playing marimba nearby emitted delicate, rain-like notes, blending nature with machine. The result was a dense yet ethereal experience, bridging the digital and the natural in a space that felt both otherworldly and deeply human.
This review of Starless Midnight at Marian Goodman Gallery gives a vivid and atmospheric recollection of Tavares Strachan’s exhibition, and captures the sensory impact and “dreamlike” transitions between space. The descriptions are thoughtful, especially the contrast between the half piano installations and the immersive/ cosmic qualities of the upstairs room. The review could maybe benefit from a bit more focus on how individual works contribute to the overarching themes of visibility, science, and cultural displacement. For instance, mentioning the work Encyclopedia of Invisibility but not explaining the direct piece further. The critique of the neon lights is intriguing but could be expanded, does the dissonance between the engineered and the artificial disrupt or deepen the work’s message?
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments on the contrast between the harsh neon light and elegant musical instruments, also fantastic descriptive language to pull the viewer in to make them feel like they were really there. One thing to include would be how the paintings on the upper-level dialogue with this clash of harmony between the human created nature and biological nature. Do you think this exhibition has an opinion on if this dissonance is good or bad, was the overall tone hopeful or was there something eerie overlying the whole thing. If it interests you, there is a discussion to be had about what the role of an installation of this extravagance has in the art market. In other words, what in this exhibition can be sold?
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