"The old river in
its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good
service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil
dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth."
-
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness,
roycrosse’s exhibition
titled The River consists of black and white drawings, a video and a sculptural
installation – all of which describe the collective mortal journey and the
circuitous paths we travel over time. There is a “river” that snakes around the
center of the gallery floor – comprised of various sized rocks, pebbles, and
plastic sheathing giving off a shimmering light moving us along at various speeds
through memory and life’s vicissitudes, always bathing us with its beauty and
unpredictable undulations. Bridges and barriers are set up so that we
need to literally “cross” the river to reach the other side - to experience the
black and white drawings that hang on the wall.
“I've known rivers:
I've known rivers
ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in
human veins.
My soul has grown deep
like the rivers.
I bathed in the
Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the
Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile
and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of
the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New
Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden
in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep
like the rivers.”
— Langston Hughes
Roy too has known rivers
since he was a young boy in Trinidad.
“As a boy I lived just
outside the city limits, and within walking distance from our two bedroom
concrete bungalow was the "Never Dirty River", a place I would visit
with friends and sometimes alone where I caught guppies for my homemade
aquarium. The River was a source of joy, a retreat, a place of adventure and
play.
“Oddly enough, when we
move to the city several years later I lived one block from a River, this one
man-made. It was called the Dry River, except in the rainy season when it would
flood its banks, a rather scary proposition. So you see I have been around
rivers for most of my childhood.”
Once we have crossed The
River we encounter the rich black and white graphite drawings of varying
dimensions depicting buildings with cathedral windows and vaulted arches, but
here we are not submerged in the luxurious color of stained glass, but rather we
are overwhelmed with a blinding white light in contrast to the enigmatic
architectural skin of a dark edifice which might be a sanctuary. The space of
these drawings is ambiguous – A moon hovers in the interval between inside and
outside. Windows become transparent ghosts floating above bridges and upward
reaching structures that are no longer earth-bound but transformed into
wraith-like dreams.
Can man wrestle
nature into submission? That is the question I asked myself when I was
confronted by the signature piece of the show entitled appropriately The River,
a large @9 foot drawing on canvas consisting of roycrosse’s panoply of
wedge-like interventional shapes/man-made “designs” superimposed upon the
river’s natural flow of time and movement. Another large drawing has trees
lined up along the edge of a barren world – nurtured by the river but devoid of
vegetation - bleak and haunted a symbol of sublime despair.
Upon leaving the
exhibition I was galvanized by a video that roycrosse shot while traveling in
New Orleans camera in hand directed at the Mississippi River. Here we get the
essence of the complexity, momentum, and core power of a river to elevate and
to destroy; to give and to take, to stagger with its aesthetic grandeur and to
vitiate with its omnipotence.
“All water has a
perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
-Toni Morrison
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