Fragments of A City, Fragments of A Year, Fragment of A Soul

Fragments of A City, Fragments of A Year, Fragment of A Soul
Solo Exhibition from Pascal Harris
Represented by Original Art Association
Curated by Ryan Sun

Fragments of A City

Fragments of A Year

Fragments of A Soul

B&W photographs by Pascal Harris.

This exhibition was planned to take place in February this year, but at that time I got a sudden invitation to perform 40 solo piano recitals, which I accepted, as I could do with both the money and the experience. This exhibition was originally going to centre on the summer. I thought up a title for it: 'Eternal Summer, Eternal Desire' and the following statement:

'In my Auckland, every summer is the same summer.

The days are repetitions of each other.

Day after day, I walk the streets trying to capture something that slips through my fingers.

Chasing the desire of my eyes.

Reaching into the deep well of eternity.'

I remember these days, the heat and the bright light, the shining objects before me, always elusive... When my concerts finally finished I could at last return to my exhibition project. But in the interim it had changed shape. I no longer wanted to confine it to those summer months, but to include images I had captured in between my concerts as well as some before the summer had started. The heat of the summer had completely faded and been replaced with winter. A winter which seemed to have a sepia hue in contrast to the bright summer. When I lived in Japan I used to look forward to the cherry blossom season at the beginning of spring, when the ordinary surroundings would be transformed into a paradise. But along with pleasure, there was also a sense of pain knowing it would only last a short two weeks or so.

With the Auckland summer I felt not pain, but a kind of desperate urge to enjoy those days of hot desire while they lasted. Unlike Japan, here there is no such clear-cut and poetic delineation of the seasons with all their rituals and symbolism. Instead there is a sameness, a banality, something that I can never connect with... and so I keep searching for fragments which, when I piece them together, create a sort of identity I can recognize, which I can call 'myself.'

Links:
Fragments of A City, Fragments of A Year, Fragment of A Soul