What are defining moments?
In Issue Six of Psychology Tomorrow Magazine we introduced a new column on this subject, in which contributors recount critical experiences in life that changed them forever. In late May Psychology Tomorrow MeetUp met at Rare Gallery in Chelsea to explore this subject further. Headlining the evening was Psychology Tomorrow Artist-in-Residence Bill Hayward, columnist Ben Peck, and Rare’s Dionisios Fragias.
Photographer Bill Hayward shot “portraits of the collaborative-self” asking MeetUp guests to create self-portraits incorporating defining moments in their lives.
Did Our Best Moment last —
“Twould supersede the Heaven —
A few — and they by risk — procure —
So this Sort — are not given —
Except as stimulants — in
Cases of Despair —
Or Stupor — The Reserve —
These Heavenly Moments are —
A Grant of the Divine —
That Certain as it comes —
Withdraws — and leaves the dazzled Soul
In her unfurnished Rooms
“Those first weeks at Williams excited me… After a couple weeks of sizing up my female classmates, I decided to introduce myself to a small group of attractive girls who regularly sat together in the cafeteria-slash-study hall…
‘What are you talking to that dork for?’ one girl admonished the other. Kids at neighboring tables had noticed what was happening by now, the rumble of laughter growing around me…
Utterly bewildered, I went back to my table, red-faced, where I attempted to concentrate on a marine biology lab report. But I felt consumed by shame and self-doubt, feelings I hadn’t seriously experienced before…
For ten solid years I kept my middle-school vow to
renounce women. I had only one stray sexual experience
with a girl during my first year at Columbia.”
“RARE Gallery is pleased to present Game Changer, or History Is Made at Night, Dionisios Fragias’ third solo show at RARE. Comprised of three-dimensional objects and wall-relief paintings, the exhibition continues the artist’s investigation into human nature’s simultaneously competing tendencies toward creation and destruction…
Fragias’ conceptual alchemy is also at work in An Unlimited Supply of History, 2013, an interactive, kinetic sculpture in which a faux marble carving of the word “history’ perches on an industrial paint shaker. When viewers turn on the machine, history shakes – over time it will crumble, providing wry commentary on the malleability of history and the difficulty of faithfully recording our present and later interpreting our past.”
Psychology Tomorrow Blog: “Game Changer, or History Is Made at Night: Dionisios Fragias NYC Opening”
