James Parker Foley
Region: MFA Annual
The experience of making this work was akin to diving into a deep pool too narrow to turn around in but with an opening on the other end. I understood ahead of time that going through would require tremendous energy, contained within a single breath. I did not know, however, how deep the pool was, what was at the bottom, or if I would return.
We think of the horizon as a line or boundary—and it is—but it is also a space. I found that by taking the horizon, pinching it between my fingers, and tipping it backward, forward, or a little to the side, I was able to expand its territory within the picture plane. I wanted this space—the space at the end of the deep and narrow pool–to become familial to me. I wanted to take a discomfiting, transitional, in-between space and make it visible. Horizons are defined in relation to transition, to movement. The border is made not for passing through, but by passing through.