for the first time in years i find myself at my father's apartment, which is not my childhood home but is filled with objects i grew up around. i did not live with my father after i was a young child. i thought my mother had thrown away most of his objects. from the glazed memory of my early years: a photograph of a nude woman in a garden that i wrote an essay about in college, struggling to recall its composition and grain; a frosted glass sculpture of a slumped-over nude woman, which i am just now realizing inspired the form and finish of my blue centaur in "Recourse"; an extensive collection of hardwood sculptures collected from all over the world, of animals and nude women, that hatched my indelible commitment to figuration. most of these objects and images i have not seen since my early adolescence. aspects of myself in the home of this man who did not raise me: our extremely similar handwriting (which he did not teach me), our unspoken appreciation for the inner lives and histories of tchotchkes, our persistent inability to keep plants alive, our persistent inattention to other alive beings. jouissance, taking it too far, destroying everything to locate the pleasure of the flesh in the beauty of the thing. "debt" means a lot of things. most debts are unpayable because you simply cannot fill an absence with a different kind of absence. ransom is the capsized dream of atonement. and real love, with which life must be lived, does not keep score. you're meant to lose track. "nature's got hands," my dear friend muses, and it is a hand that alternates between smothering and being bitten. civilization is unnatural. kindness, while not undesirable, is necessarily intentional because it must be chosen. there is nothing obvious about it. debt 2022 found schoolchair, carved maple, polyester fleece, LED lights, paper collage, discarded garment rack, textile, resin, thread, plaster, epoxy clay, color pigment, beeswax, masking tape, steel traps 37 x 60 x 38 inches “forgive everything” is on view at @nightgallery through january 21. the gallery is closed for the holiday and will reopen january 2. 📷 nik massey