Lilla, Squatting (knealing), Montauk, New York, 2002
- Medium: gelatin silver print mounted with white frame
- Size: 101.6 x 76.2 x 0 cm
This picture is part of Michael Dweck's "the End" and is a translation of an endless summer in Montauk. That blessed but all-too-short interlude that separates the seasons of school and work, adolescence and adulthood. Dweck's vision of the far end of the island mixes the desires and anxieties of youth and old age, of immaturity and conscience, the exuberance of one's closing time and the excitement of old bachelors. Our time is not in our hands.
THE ARTIST: MICHAEL DWECK
Michael Dweck’s The End: Montauk, N.Y., is a private Idaho, a personal Eden, at once remembered and imagined. The Arcadian setting is a place for recreation, self-invention, and the celebration of physical beauty and well-being and the tender temptations of the flesh. It is a down-home beach paradise of a distinctly American variety, Endless Summer, that blessed but all too brief interlude that separates the seasons of school and work, adolescence and adulthood. Dweck’s vision of the far end of the island mingles the yearnings and anxieties of youth and age, of callowness and conscience, the exuberance of one’s salad days and the frisson of old bachelors. The season in the sun in due course passes into autumn. Youth and beauty blush, exude their sweetness, exert their power, but inevitably falter and fade before the onslaught of the years under the overarching, ozone-depleted sky. Our times are not in our hands. The eviction notice is tied to the gate, even as one enters, and the unease of that knowledge hovers over the good fun. The golden youth of one summer is the worldly-wise veteran or the broken old timer of another. The End is an elegy to the evanescence of youth and an ode to the consolation of art.
EXTRA INFO
Collaboration with Maruani Mercier Gallery