Winston Wächter Fine Art | Remains, Curated by Dena Rigby

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
- Nelson Mandela ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’

In his autobiography, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, Nelson Mandela writes, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” Our lives are composed of journeys that lead us away from our past and often bring us back to those roots, only to find that with our experiences, our hearts have hardened in some ways and opened in others. People have come and gone and our memories are washed of what we choose to overlook, while we find great importance in the most mundane conversations. New buildings are erected where old homes once stood and we pine for the feeling of walking down that old street we knew as a child. We are older, wiser, weaker, stronger, lazier, less patient, more tolerant, and, without fail, changed. Sometimes we are surprised to find that what remains has improved, and we are, as Mandela states, altered in every way.

Throughout our journey, memories are woven into the fabric of our being. We cannot hold every object or feeling, but what does remain are memories. Some are poignant, others faint. They are often fleeting, colorless images that are hard to capture and are brought on by a smell, sound, or even something as simple as a wallpaper design. The memories may be treasured or painful, but the experiences are a part of our frame of reference and these “remains” make us unique.

This exhibition is meant to evoke the feeling of a time or place that may have touched the viewer’s past. The works are colorless and obscure, with very little representational quality. The viewer is pushed to focus on the essence of the imagery and to let their mind wander to that garden they knew as a child or to their grandmother’s den where the wallpaper had a strange baroque pattern. Through meditative, ethereal and pure colorless work, the viewer is asked to focus on the sense of the sculpture or painting.