chance encounters / prints and poetry
The artist and poet create separately and practice chance operations in pairing a line of text with an image - the converging conversation between image and text, between line and figure, situates memory as a future potential of unexpected and unpredictable interactions.
THE PROJECT
MEMORY IS A FUTURE TENSE is a collaboration between artist Lu Cong and poet Serena Chopra.
THE ART
Each print is an original. As the drawing composition and line of text will only be used once over the collaboration, the subscriber will inherit a truly unique and unexpected creation each month.
The artwork is offered by subscription. Once a month, each subscriber will receive a one-of-a-kind print by Lu Cong on which Serena Chopra has hand written text from a yet unpublished, in process manuscript.
The collaboration explores the gesture of reaching-towards-form in which one knows or remembers the self in a subjunctive, future tense that desires an impossibly articulate manifestation.
The dependency of text on image and image on text demonstrates that the interpretation of form, and thus identity, relies on necessary but transient encounters.
It is stamped and signed by both artists, and authenticated by hologram security label.
Each print measures 12 inches by 12 inches, of which the image is 8 inches by 8 inches, and is printed in archival ink, on 330gsm museum rag paper.
THE PRINTS
In an effort to promote the transitory, ephemeral and intimate quality of art-making and sharing rarely encountered in our digital age, the subscriber will obtain the sole physical image of the composition. No digital copies will be retained.
In an effort to promote the transitory, ephemeral and intimate quality of art-making and sharing rarely encountered in our digital age, the subscriber will obtain the sole physical image of the composition. No digital copies will be retained.
12"
30.5 cm
8"
20.3 cm
18 mil
330 gsm
ARCHIVAL
ONE OF A KIND
NO DIGITAL
REMENANTS
SIGNED
&
CERTIFIED
1st / MONTH
$190 / 1 Print / Month
(US Subscription, shipping included)
Related Project: Night Drawings
Serena Chopra is a PhD (ABD) in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. She is the author of two full-length books, This Human (Coconut Books, 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press, 2016), and two chapbooks, Penumbra (Flying Guillotine Press, 2011) and Livid Season (Free Poetry, 2012).
She is also a dancer and visual artist, serving as a senior company member of the moderndance company, Evolving Doors Dance, and as a 2011-2013 artist-in- residence at RedLine Gallery in Denver.
She is currently working on a shadow performance of her forthcoming book, Ic, with Splintered Light Theater. She has taught poetry and writing at many of the Colorado front-range universities, as well as to children in the Young Writers Workshop in Virginia and previously with Writers in the Schools. She currently teaches poetry and poetic thought in the MFA program at Naropa University and is a freelance copywriter.
Lu Cong was born in Shanghai, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 11. He studied biology at the University of Iowa, and attended graduate school for Humanities at the University of Colorado. He’s been recognized as an original and influential American painter. His work has been exhibited at many institutions and galleries, including the University of Connecticut (Storrs), the University of Denver (Denver), Henoch Gallery (New York), Jonathan LeVine Gallery (New York), Corey Helford Gallery (Los Angeles).
His recent projects include South West Light (2011), How Long Have You Been Gone (2013-2015), Being There Means Something (2015), and Night Drawings (2016- ).
THE ARTISTS