"so enviable, far north of the floating world, mountain cherry blossoms"   - Basho

"even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo's call, I long for Kyoto" - Basho

Mountains and Folds is an attempted vacation. The timing could be no more opportune; in the dead heat of the summer, New York becomes downright oppressive. Light-refracting architecture and light-hungry asphalt transform the city into a solar cooker. The wind-tunnel thing that happens in Chelsea in fall and winter is not happening. Worst of all, other living bodies are warm and because we are surrounded by them, because we sleep next to them, they are causing us to sweat.

There arises the problem of choosing where to go, because while the beach seems like a great destination it's also crowded; everyone has the same idea. The mountain seems like the ideal landscape: it has isolating potential. The mountain engenders subjectivity. The irony is that there is no better way to experience this isolation than with a few friends. Coping with the mountain alone, one can only project outwards and reflect inwards. But bringing a few buddies along will open up exciting possibilities, the possibility of change. The mountain becomes a site of productivity. Why trip by yourself when you can have a drum circle?

It turns out that the real landscape is nothing like the idealized one. The landscape has to be remembered, and where it cannot be remembered it is fabricated. To be honest, no one even leaves the city. The works in Mountains and Folds present the landscape wholly from an urban context. Most of the climbing is social. The art becomes a little hardened, less nostalgic. While it still alludes to the simplicity and grandiosity of the natural sublime, the art in Mountains and Folds also alludes to the pains and joys of constant negotiation with the wants and desires of others, and essentially operates in the context of being together.

-Greg Fong