Lance Fung Gallery is proud to exhibit Jessica Higgins' Poet Walk (The Diamond Forest) a large scale intermedia project making a radical transfer of text into space. In this one woman show artist Jessica Higgins extends ideas of textual organization beyond the two dimensional constructs associated with the page or pattern poetry, and the book or architecture of concision.
Here the artist's "text" takes the form of a forest of haikus suspended on threads under branches in diamond formations allowing for a non sequential reading of text and space simultaneously, much like the experience of reading space in a forest.
The viewer encounters suspended branches framing a forest of hanging text particles derived from original haiku works Ms. Higgins brings to the installation. As we move through the space, new texts randomly occur before us. The traditional five seven five metrics of Haiku are mapped to triangular zones of poem-space. Her background in Performance Art and Installation informs a graceful viewer interaction in a diamond forest of signs and references.
Committed to working with the essentials of art in unique ways, Jessica Higgins' work is grounded in intermedia, site-specific installation, and performance. On occasion she has included olfactory elements to provide multi-sensory dimensions. Additionally in Poet Walk she exhibits clear boxes termed "thought assemblages." They contain ideas or notions as miniature installation works in small structures serving as shelter.
Her interest in the metaphysical results in a unique combination of materials, thought and expression of structure. "My installations express feelings and ideas through personal and physical connections with unusual people, objects and materials." Accordingly she also presents a shrine entitled Blue Pilgrimage, which houses palm sized objects brought to her by the other Lance Fung Gallery artists during a pilgrimage to a building in Upstate New York. The building exists on a site known to the public as Poet's Walk. The ritual is documented within the shrine on a palm sized video monitor housed along with the objects.
With Poet Walk, The Diamond Forest, Jessica Higgins broadens a dialogue around book, page, action and space taking place between many global participants such as concrete and pattern poets, American intermedia publications and the thriving legacy of Poland's urban anthologies.
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