Samuel Hindolo
Eurostar
15 Orient and Galerie Buchholz
September 20 - November 2
Opening Reception;
Friday, September 20th
6-8 pm at Galerie Buchholz, 7-9 pm at 15 Orient
15 Orient is delighted to announce the opening of “Eurostar”, a solo-exhibition by Samuel Hindolo. Conceived as a show in two parts, the exhibition spans 15 Orient’s Walker Street gallery and Galerie Buchholz’s East 82nd street space. “Eurostar” marks the artist's third solo-show with 15 Orient and the inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s new Tribeca location.
Eurostar
The automatic sliding door to the cabin was too sensitive. Any slight motion from the corridor would activate the mechanism. As late passengers tiptoed past to find their seats, the room would gape as if all of them would pile in, which prompted an anxiety that this might not be a quiet trip after so much human friction earlier. When the whole thing finally moved, luckily with only one traveling neighbor who was already there—eyes closed—before I sat down, the door acted up again whenever the air conditioner kicked in about every half hour. It was startling the first, second, third, fourth times. The cooling system was broken. The space would suddenly get blasted with loud air, hotter than the already stuffy atmosphere. Look at him. How could anyone sleep here? Were other parts equally suffocating? I was too lethargic in the double heat to get up and go test the temperature elsewhere, hypnotized as I was by my surroundings. An incomprehensible scene played out to my left. The fastest landscape I’d ever seen zipped by beyond the window pane. I wasn’t completely sure it was nature I was looking at. Clearly the neighbor puncturing the view was used to these conditions. It was my first time. He slept in a way that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. His head rested on nothing for long; it instead bobbed up and down, up and down, touching his chest before swinging back to hit the red cushioned surface behind him. Maybe the backdrop of outside’s greenish rush played tricks on me because I couldn’t shake a sense that his movements were also abnormally slow. It went on like so for days, I came to imagine he was a pious man forever bowing to some god in his dream. The phantom opening and closing of the door had long faded into an ambient event that turned our fiberglass room into a cuckoo clock without the bird.
Absolutely without warning, another bullet whizzed outside going the opposite direction. I felt it exactly as it was: a full handed slap to the senses. The super speed flicker of the rattling machine blackened the marathon of furious trees. It matched the backlit darkness of my neighbor, erasing him for a brief second. His devotional head reappeared untouched before I could adjust my eyes. Another blast of hot air filled the room. This time I was reminded of the malfunctioning door.
Text by Claudette Gacuti
