Wallace Berman, Tony Lewis, Kon Trubkovich

UNTITLED, in collaboration with the Museum at Eldridge Street, is proud to present Walls and Words, an exhibition of works by Wallace Berman, Tony Lewis, and Kon Trubkovich.

language - any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc.

Experienced in the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue, Walls and Words explores the spiritual aspects of the works of Berman, Lewis, and Trubkovich outside of their relationships to contemporary art production. Through their presentation within a synagogue, the works in Walls and Words explore the associations between the gnostic and collective understandings of the world through their own personal, but familiar, aesthetic systems of understanding.

The artists of the exhibition articulate the parallel paths of language and art through text, spirituality, and media. Much like Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew language, a gnostic codex activates the works on display. Each of the three artists independently arrives at a conversation imbued with issues of identity, memory, politics, and culture at large.

The works of Walls and Words are activated through a key, a broader and more indirect understanding of language. Connected through the use of familiar cultural signifiers the works modify, contort, and isolate central functions of the traditional use of language in exchange for an abstracted, yet direct, guide towards the meaning of the work.

Although the featured artists have arrived at unique ends through visual and textual language, the works on exhibit share a commonality, having been produced within parameters. For each artist a systematic approach was defined through a numeric negotiation. Wallace Berman centered his spiritually minded works around Kabbalah and the Hebrew language. In doing so, his focus on Aleph and its numerical value of 26 became essential tenets of his practice. Tony Lewis’ dismantled text pieces are each derived from a specific 60 letter long original sentence. And Kon Trubkovich produces works that break down a single second of footage into 24 single frames.

Through their isolation, segmentation, and disorientation of familiar systems of exchange the works of Walls and Words offer an inlet to a broader understanding of dialogue and the temporality of the human condition. Through proposing alternate methods of interpreting the existing structures of communication the exhibition points to an underlying bridge between the gnostic and the collective understanding of the world.

Walls and Words is displayed within the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a magnificent National Historic Landmark that first opened its doors in 1887. The synagogue is now home to the Museum at Eldridge Street, as well as a small continuing group of worshipers who meet for Sabbath and holiday services. The Museum at Eldridge Street is pleased to be the home for "Walls and Words" which thoughtfully integrates contemporary culture within our historic sacred site, and marries history, spirituality, art and architecture.