In between pressing February deadlines and a record-breaking snowfall yesterday, I managed to spend some time with Random Number friends Darren Jones and Ryan Roa. Through his Phenomena Project, Jones is curating an interesting program for the Trinity Wall Street Church by responding with a series of exhibitions to the church’s 2011 theme of “reading the scriptures through other eyes”. Not an easy task, especially for a self-proclaimed atheist.
In the current show, Ryan Roa contributes the kind of poetic and conceptually-driven installation that has come to define his body of work. Inside the small museum of Trinity Church, Roa has placed Re-form, a sculpture made of flashing emergency lights supported by a cleaved telephone pole, which recalls a downward pointing version of the cross of St. Peter.
On the walls surrounding the sculpture are various hand-written and typed notes left by visitors as they consider the issues set forward through the exhibition and the church’s annual theme. These public communiques will be collected and presented in book format at the close of the exhibition. There is an effortless connection between the communicative power of Roa’s materials and the various levels of expression in the visitors’ notes.
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