It was a small exhibition: jewelry, gold, modern design. Reinventing Modernity, I think. Gallery 909 at the Metropolitan Museum was dark and the precise creations glowed in their well-lit cases. The dance of the visitors between glass boxes was a gentle one. We were all looking at each other and at the work: creations that had travelled here for generations from various places. Some of us much more oxidized than others, all of us very rare, in a special shape, some less temporary than others, all somehow alive. And as we moved at just the right speed and layered ourselves in the space provided, the picture just had to happen. Any picture. The reduced, focused view of things. Well, the subjective kind of focus.
Thousands have seen the picture by now, I have been told. But what have they really seen? What do you see? Do the reduction and the gentle focus allow you to enter yourself between the layers? Are you able to enter the soft gate towards a reflection of who you can be you now? Which ones of the layers are not imagined at this point? Are we imagined? Does it take an incomplete image to allow us an entry into ourselves?
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