The Tranquility of Influence – part two: Parables in Distress

Curated by Mark McElhattenThese three pieces each create different kinds of fractured parables each coincidentally involving a crisis in individuation -pilgrimages of struggle with young children finding their way in or way out of this world. Derailing found source materials images sometimes prove to be retentive of original meaning even when displayed in purposeful disarray. But in their new states of dreamlike reversals, elliptical punctuation and physical puncturing and fragmentation many images arrive at new meanings and mutated forms. At the heart of” Barbara’s Blindness” is an original source film that seeks to elicit the sensual wonders of the seasonal resurrections of Spring quivering with the suggestion of a predictable miracle. But streaming through this material are possible alter egos of Barbara or Mary -young girls enamored of dangerous but catalytic outsiders as seen in “Frankenstein” and significantly in the film “Tiger Bay” where the inestimable Haley Mills in her youngest avatar stars opposite her father.”I Began to Wish” is perhaps a parable of more sinister miracles and botanical surprise. Working with abandoned public library educational films (subtitled for the “hard of hearing”) Murray reverses the flow of meaning in effect re -construing cause and effect and altering the syntax of the original films so that a constructive lesson (with a positive outcome) that reflects on responsibility, loneliness and guilt here becomes a parable of dire consequence, irreversible entropy and dark yearnings.They Say -masterful and meticulous like a Tibetan prayer rug or a Byzantine mosaic is built from fragments of melodrama and myth. Slowly emerging over time the drama of imperiled animals a nearly magnetic bog and a young boy who clings to a dream and a horse.-Mark McElhatten