When things go missing, we believe we can’t see them. We perceive absence as lack. We go searching in familiar corners of rooms and worn out stretches of memory. We alert loved ones, we launch search parties, we plan to be better at not forgetting. Yet where are these items during our fretful searches? Could it be that any object or person or feeling is never more present than during agonizing moments of absence? With careful concentration and renewed awareness can we actually translate absence into presence?
The imagery in Joel Whitaker’s exhibition When Things Go Missing (WTGM) suggests that such translation may be possible. He transports the viewer beyond stories and facts reliant on presence. He invites us to places that favor the poetic over the literal, yet also depict the literal and physical spaces that linger beyond, behind and around the poetic. His works are a gentle command to look, an urgent reminder to see the tenuous boundaries among space (territories others delineate), place (locations we inhabit, love, manipulate or overlook) and objects both lost and found (after all, “matter is neither created nor destroyed,” right?).
Когда профессор Мэллори, знаменитый археолог, (1) пригласил меня принять участие в его экспедиции по поиску Затерянного города в Гималаях, 1(2) не колеблясь принял
его приглашение. Мэллори (3) обнаружил древнюю карту, показывающую расположение города, хотя ни один европеец (4) никогда раньше не бывал в этом районе. На самом деле, большинство коллег Мэллори либо (5) считали, что город (6) никогда не существовал, либо (7) считали, что он (8) давно исчез и (9) стал просто легендой. По словам профессора, строители города (10) спрятали его среди гор, чтобы защитить его огромные богатства. Он (11) полагал, что потомки этих древних людей (12) все еще держались в стороне от остального человечества по тем же самым причинам. Поэтому, когда мы (13) прохладным майским утром отправились в сторону далеких гор, каждый из нас (14) с нетерпением ждал захватывающих открытий. В течение недели или больше мы (15) поднимались все выше и выше, следуя карте, которую Мэллори (16) изучал с
In 2020, perhaps I will live in the capital of our country, Moscow. Probably find new friends, but also with old friends, too, will communicate. I hope to get higher education. Another thing I would like to get a prestigious job, which I can earn money, and if the earnings will be good, I hope I can help my country and people in need. I buy myself a steep car, nice big house. I think so, because now I`m learning well in school, play sport, wear stylish and fashionable clothes, I was popular in society, have been receiving a small income on the Internet. And in 2020 I hope to stay in the same smart, sporty and popular in society. If I stay the same then I can support my family and myself, I will always be a lot of wonderful friends. Maybe I will become a famous athlete or a famous television presenter, or will work in sprouted policy.
I certainly want to be the way I describe myself now, because it is very healthy and beautiful!