I went back to visit the group show some time after the opening. I took away one of the foam kickboards, which now seemed extraneous. The little constructions on the long plastic folding table had more room. Some olive oil from the little circle on the table had, over the intervening days, dripped and pooled neatly onto the polished concrete floor. Would it stain? It still looked right. While installing, I’d had the idea—unheard of—to pour this olive oil, almost hi-viz green, onto one of the little things. Was I ruining it? But it did look fantastic. And Marian was nothing but supportive. When I walked into the next gallery, edited kickboard in hand, she was there, smiling, standing next to another table of small assemblages, but not mine.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream so specific, or of such a situation. Writing it down now, it feels like I can recognize a bunch of the elements, though I also worry that I’m replacing things I can’t recall with references, like how memories are reconstructed anew each time you remember them. I can’t see the little sculptures almost at all.
And it seems like I dreamt remembering pouring the olive oil. I wrote that that detail was weird, notable, unusual, then specific, deleting each in turn, because I’m not sure it was any of those except specific, and the specificity was already dissipating.
Does it mean anything? Does it mean anything different because it’s a week after rethinking Johns and his dreaming? I can’t see the little sculptures almost at all now. Certainly not enough to wake up and decide to make them. I see that Rauschenberg tableful of scatole personale photo, or components of a Sarah Sze installation, or something larger than Yuji Agematsu normally makes, and can recognize only that neither was right.
Is that what Johns meant by examining his work and removing all the references to other people’s? If so, the only thing left blocking out the pleas of conservators, and pouring the most extra virgin olive oil I can find on a church table, as Marian Goodman looks on beatifically.