The Parting, Attended

Exhibition. 7 works on view at ///snail.shield.mason, 1400-52 N 5TH ST, Kensington, Old. The wall is circular: walking in either direction returns to the title wall. Use Tab to move between works and Enter to read a work’s wall label. Arrow keys move along the wall.

Seven works at a single point in the city, the first acquired in October 2024 and the most recent in May 2025; all of them have since been accessioned into the permanent collection. One commissioner: Parks & Recreation. The museum did not solicit any of them.

The works are exhibited in order of acquisition. Visitors will notice that the subject does not change; the museum invites them to consider what does.

1. The Parting, Attended, No. 9 — Nitrile, human hair, incident light, clinical linen. Accession 17220421. Acquired October 22, 2024. 695 days on view. The composition resolves around the narrow channel the gloved fingers hold open, where the hair is drawn to either side and the pale scalp is briefly legible beneath it. Violet-blue nitrile reads as the only saturated color in the frame apart from the short red line at the center, and the white sheet behind flattens the light so that neither hand casts a shadow. The museum notes the smallness of the wound relative to the apparatus assembled around it: four fingers above, four below, an entire arrangement of attention organized around a mark of a few centimeters. Acquired as the ninth work from its location, it documents the point at which a recreational surface enters a clinical one.
2. The Parting, Attended, No. 10 — Moulded rubber, galvanised chain, poured safety surfacing, autumn light. Accession 17221092. Acquired October 23, 2024. 694 days on view. The seat's front wall has parted along a single vertical tear, and the freed edge has curled back on itself into a tight dark lip that no longer meets its opposite side. Low sun enters from behind, so the split reads as a bright seam in an otherwise unbroken silhouette, while the red surfacing below shows its own worn openings where the poured rubber has given way to black. Read against the earlier works of the series, this one is the most complete in its separation: the two halves hang at rest, each holding the shape it took when it let go. The museum preserves it for the correspondence between the opening in the seat and the openings in the ground beneath it.
3. The Parting, Attended, No. 13 — Standing water, silt deposit, painted masonry, winter light. Accession 17563827. Acquired April 28, 2025. 507 days on view. The water is shallow enough to hold the mural's blue diagonals and the chevron pattern beneath the painted figures in near-complete reflection, so that the wall appears twice in a single frame. A tan bed of silt has spread across the pavement in a broad arc and carries the impressions of footfalls and tire treads, recording passage across the sheet rather than through it. Read against its siblings in the series, this work shows the deposit at its widest extent, the water withdrawn toward the shaded edge where the pavement remains dark. The museum preserves it as the series' clearest demonstration of how a flat surface becomes a mirror and a record at once.
4. The Parting, Attended, No. 14 — Concrete slab, silt deposit, standing water, open sky. Accession 17566049. Acquired April 28, 2025. 507 days on view. The silt has dried to a pale ochre that reads almost as sand against the grey aggregate at the frame's lower edge, and tire tracks and shoe prints cross it in shallow arcs. At the center a ring of broken concrete surrounds water held at a brown opacity that returns the sky as a flat brassy sheet rather than blue. Compared with earlier works in the series, the pool has contracted and its rim has widened, leaving the deposit to record the reach of the water rather than the water itself. The museum preserves this stage for the clarity with which a receding surface marks its own former extent.
5. The Parting, Attended, No. 15 — Mature tree, wood mulch bed, fractured concrete, midday shadow. Accession 17586287. Acquired May 8, 2025. 497 days on view. The composition resolves around the mulch bed, a dark circle cut into pale concrete and filled to the level of the paving, with the tree's shadow laid across it in fine leaf-shaped detail. Cracks in the surrounding slabs converge toward the bed at several angles, and the root flare has begun to press outward against its own margin. Read against its siblings in the series, this is the passage in which the ground and the planting negotiate most openly. The museum preserves it as the most legible account of that negotiation.
6. The Parting, Attended, No. 16 — Molded polyethylene, rubberized safety surfacing, standing water, overcast light. Accession 17600318. Acquired May 15, 2025. 490 days on view. The red of the slide is the only saturated color in the composition, and it sits against a field of grey water, brown rubber matting, and flat overcast sky. Clippings and grit have settled along the slide's wet curve, and the concrete pad behind it holds water in sheets wide enough to return the trees and the bench upside down. Like others in this series, the work is organized around a single bright object attended by a surrounding that has gone soft and reflective. The museum preserves it for the completeness of that reflection, which extends the park downward as far as it extends up.
7. The Parting, Attended, No. 17 — Standing water, concrete substrate, dappled shade. Accession 17607267. Acquired May 19, 2025. 486 days on view. The pool holds the tree above it in full, trunk and upper branches rendered darker and more precise in the water than in the air. Its perimeter is irregular, tapering to thin fingers where the concrete pad falls away by only a fraction, and the surrounding slab remains stained several feet past the waterline. The bench sits just clear of the edge, its red backrest bleached toward pink, oriented away from the water it borders. Among the works gathered here, this one is distinguished by its reflective register: the museum preserves it as the series' only mirror.

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