Lutz Bacher, The Present Moment
August 28 – November 30, 2014

The fifth installment of Night (1947–2015) is a modest paper fortune by Lutz Bacher, an artist known since the 1970s for her enigmatic, open-ended, and appropriative strategies. Its Chinese takeout intimacy instructs us to “[d]evelop an appreciation for the present moment,” a proposal that appeals to the relationship between modernism and spirituality.

As the Glass House communes with nature—in step with its changing seasons—it also lies without, protecting its interior like a crystal ball. If architecture surrounds the zen-like divination at its airy center, is the present moment in here or out there?

Bacher works with photography, painting, video, sculpture, and collage, although her principle medium might be constellation. Her recent retrospective catalog Snow reveals a heartbreaking index of things found, modified, or distorted: an enormous broken mirror; stacked and wrapped cases of Bud and Bud Light; a surreal painting of indecipherable origins.

Her practice suggests that meaning and making are elastic, not to mention happening all the time: even exactly now.