Untitled (Wonder), 2024 Artist Statement

… the philosophical act begins with the investigation of the visible, concrete world of experience lying before one’s eyes; that philosophy begins ‘from below’, in questioning the experience of things encountered everyday, a questioning which opens up ever newer, more ‘astounding’ depths to the one who searches.” - Josef Pieper 

Untitled (Wonder) sits at the top of an urban city’s temple of cultural temporality. The Philadelphia Museum of Art lies at the end of a strategic promenade from the heart of City Hall straight to the mount of artistic influence. When the museum was built in  1928, it provided a gateway. The front of the museum faced the city, while it's  backside abutted nature and the pastoral beyond. The back of the art museum has long provided an awkward liminality of black pavement roughed over from various use before promenade and access pathways to the Waterworks and Boathouse Row. These markers provide reference to historical affluence and leisure and continue to provide urban exploration and activity to both residents and tourists. On one side of the museum’s back entrance sits Giuseppe Penone’s ‘Identitá’, 2022, a cast of dead trees rising up and embracing top down, a reflection and contemplation between man and nature, space and time. Opposite the other side of the back entrance, the west space has hosted parking, event space and temporary art installations extending and curving into views of city and nature alike, both highway and river. Upon exiting the museum's thick walls, this black expense becomes an empty and abrupt pause haltingly returning us to the everyday and sounds of the city rising up, reminding us we are no longer in formal museum ambience anymore. 

But what if in that pause, inspiration rises up. Perhaps not as monumental but in small ways, we look over in the everyday glory of where we are in space and time and find that yes, searching, ah,... there is the wonder.

Untitled (Wonder) invites the participant to “wonder” the black pavement expanse from light to light, this mountainous margin between the intention of art institution and life lived in creative et cetera.

The piece is composed and gives reference to the materiality of Japanese rice paper and also the Japanese concept of Ma. Other materials include: cardboard architecture, constructed wood frame and led lighting apparatus. The piece is temporary and unaffiliated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art nor the City of Philadelphia.