That Shimmering Beast

That shimmering beast – the capture of urban lifewith works by Virgilio Ferreira, Mehrdad Naraghi and Miyuki OkuyamaExhibition dates: June 8 - July 4, 2010Opening reception: June 8, 7.00 pm - 10.00 pm

We humans like to think we can control cities because we are the ones building them, but trying to comprehend their living essence, all we grasp is thin air. The city, that entity which lies beneath the web of codes and signs we weave, reveals itself only in glimpses, in instants separated by intervals, in the glint of light in the fog, in the shadows of our dreams. Its essence flits through our minds like a beast shimmering in the thicket. Now you see it, now you don’t, but you sense its presence. “You can hunt for it,” Marco Polo tells the Great Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, ”but only in the way I have said”. This is the beast we see shimmering, scattered, fragmented, but eerily present nonetheless in the work of