What was lost is found
It is quite fitting that the pictures from Michal Rovner's exhibition in Stone at Pace Wildenstein gallery in Chelsea New York are the ones that went missing. The exhibition illustrates the two states of the old and the new writing: the permanence of that which is written in stone and the transcience of the modern media. But I will not show you the pictures just yet, as I am on a vacation in the vacation, only carrying the little PowerBook G4 that caused the whole frustration.

Still, the incident of the lost pictures resonates with the subject matter of In Stone. Little movies where images that are very human-like have been animated into motion walk across the surfaces of books and stones, projected onto the paper. In one book a drawing swirls and shifts, in another the careful chinese calligraphy moves, elusive and impossible to keep in focus as you watch. The same technique is used on rocks, and elusive, shifting rosetta stones stand next to heavy runestones and shiny rocks that seem to have fallen from outer space. In one room are two large stone tablets, perhaps with the ten commandments, only these commandments are constantly shifting. In another room of the gallery there is a well. When you look into the well you see red shapes, perhaps humans, perhaps scorpions, scuttling in a whirling, panicky motion across the white, white sands.

I walked through this exhibition with a sensation of amazement and awe, struck by the force of the contrast. The heavy stone, the elusive light, the reference of the everlasting and permanent battling with the fluid and fluctuating.

Yoko, lovely, entertaining and bright companion in NYC adventures, heard about this exhibition from an artist friend - whose work we visited later, in a different gallery. It was the last day of the exhibition, and I am still lost in the marvel of it. when I have a chance I will try to post a little movie that I made of the stone tablets, to give you a tiny little impression of the quality of this work.