SCAD presents Robert Wilson: ‘A Boy From Texas,” open through January 16th, 2022.
“As a boy, I never wanted the guns my father gave me, nor to go deer hunting with him. The only thing positive about the experience was that we would get up early in the morning and go out on our own to sit in a blind, waiting for a deer to appear. I always liked being alone, having this space, a place for my mind to have its own thoughts; perchance to dream. A boy from Texas.”
Renowned for his masterful use of light in theatrical productions across the world’s most important theaters, Wilson has often cited the expansive horizons of the Texas landscape as a source of inspiration for his stage environments. His earliest performance works were actions of extreme duration, “silent operas” with no words, few sounds, and slow, exacting movements: theatrical movement at the pace of nature.
A Boy From Texas is in part homage to the work of George Paul Thek, Wilson’s close friend and collaborator on early performances. Thek’s visionary installations were environments of fantasy and detritus constructed over a span of weeks by an ensemble of artists working collectively. Recurring in these installations was the motif of a stag as well as a room-sized “tomb” in the form of a truncated pyramid, envisioned by Thek as a site of rebirth and renewal.
A Boy From Texas presents an installation of cast truncated pyramids and hand-blown deer exquisitely fabricated by Corning Glass. The fragility of the translucent deer stands in counterpoint to the ancient geometry and seemingly infinite depth of the pyramids. This tension sustains them, like the sole inhabitants of an endless landscape.