Alex Pensato

The Dark Tower Projects: Sakura

2006

– @keywords

The Dark Tower Projects: Sakura continues Alex Pensato's investigation into the abstract and hidden linguistic structures manifest in the built environment. Sakura is a Japanese word that describes the ephemeral beauty of a cherry blossom. It is often used as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of life. Pensato has inverted the logic of capitalism into a poetry of time by restructuring the linguistic value of the title for a near future residential apartment building. The work consists of a large carbon paper and Post-ItTM note representation of the Sakura building and two photographs depicting the buildings promotional signage and display suite. Hung like informational panels, the photos illustrate the Sakura buildings current status as investment and speculation. Depicting a building that has yet to be constructed as a silhouette of black carbon paper and yellow Post-ItTM Notes leads one to consider the unseen memos and receipts that invisibly underpin the architecture and planning of the city. These ephemeral materials adhered to the gallery wall form an elaborate yet momentary gesture that parallels both the fleetingness of the Sakura blossom and the unseen bureaucratic, economic and communicative structures underlying the near-future materialization of the Sakura tower. The Dark Tower Projects: Sakura contemplates the fragility of its momentary passing from the ideal into the real. -Willie Brisco (Director/Curator Galerie Werner Whitman)