Questions of Faith
Spells and divinations at 56 Henry. Plus Tongue in the Mind and a grimy Hungarian white wine.
I once got into trouble with an astrologer (who also happens to be a well-known poet) because at the beginning of our consultation I asked, So, how does this all work?
I meant the question sincerely—I wasn’t going to waste my time and my girlfriend’s money (birthday gift, folks!) to argue about whether astrology is “real.” What I wanted to know was simply whether astrology was, in this person’s view, a kind of science, ie: the result of gravitation or electromagnetism or some other quantifiable effect related to the positions of the stars at one’s birth; or, on the other hand, if it was spiritual and thus could not be explained according to such epistemological standards.
Behind their stylishly oversized eyewear, the astrologer was nonplussed. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, so I was taken aback. I can’t remember their precise response, but it wasn’t terribly to the point: a cold shoulder. I shut up and went on with the rest of the session, which was mostly useless, but that was the fault of my family and the state of South Carolina, neither of whom could provide me with a precise time of birth.
Was my question idiotic? I’m Pisces/Virgo/Virgo, in case you’re wondering.
The current exhibition at 56 Henry gallery, in the venue’s original space, is a collection of objects made by a person who goes by the name of L. They’re not artworks. Rather, they are spells, divinations, an altar, and an amulet, per the titles on the checklist.
L’s spells are striking, gorgeous even, if a little in the high-end housewares range. Each comprises a set of myriad items inside a two-foot-tall Murano glass jug filled with preservative oil. Spell for access to holaetherial planes and assistance from benevolent sentient energy fields (2023), for example, features a floating spray of long black feathers with the quill ends facing upward, forming a kind of inverted bouquet. Some quail-size eggs float, while others lie in a layer at the bottom alongside metal washers, minerals, and myriad other small elements.
Whatever it says about me—as with the astrologer those several years ago—my response was to assimilate the spell into a rationalist framework. I took the “holoaetheral” of the title as a reference to the holographic principle from physics, which posits that a space in a particular reality of n dimensions is but an outline of a full volume of a space in n + 1 dimensions. Thus our four-dimensional reality is but the outline of a five-dimension volume in the next level of reality. L’s spell is meant to give us access to and aid from beings who exist in that next level of the real, or one beyond that.
Mounted on the walls at 56 Henry, meanwhile, are divinations. These works—and here I switch to that term to acknowledge that L’s objects are in fact for sale in an art gallery in the busiest marketplace for such goods on the planet—are identified only by their date and their method, hydromancy. Their procedure involved the use of watercolors, including some that belonged to L’s late grandfather.
Like the spells, these framed works on paper are aesthetic if less dramatic or resolved, bright abstractions in well-defined fields with dot motifs. The magenta-toned one from March 26, 2023, has a number of finger-like radials like a kid’s drawing of a turkey; the one from March 10 is a dark and pale-blue wedge shape that suggests a swole turnip. A series of tiny marks in yellow and pink have what I would describe as an ornamental effect—if I could comfortably describe the object in the terms I conventionally use for art.
While in general I’m pro-opacité, I felt a little cheated by the lack of specificity about the hydromancies. Why were they made? What did they say? The gap seemed inconsistent vis-à-vis the information provided about the other works in the show. Also March 10 is my birthday. It was hard not to feel like that coincidence qualified me for a peek behind the veil.
Ultimately, however, I found myself reluctant to ask this or any other questions. It seemed inevitable that I’d be perceived as a cynic, and I didn’t want the gallery sitter to feel like I was making them a proxy in some kind of God Delusion debate. An awkward interaction was more emotional labor than either of us was getting paid for.
Later, I realized that I had kept quiet for a second reason. The show had put me in the awkward position of having to ask, What does it mean? By the transposition—or superposition, perhaps, to once again adopt the language of physics—of the systems of meaning brought to bear within the white cube, L had drolly (presumably inadvertently) put me in the position of being a philistine. Conceptual art relies on elements no more tangible than what’s presented at 56 Henry, but in the case of the former, I’m authorized as a critic to interrogate their assumptions. In the case of work that impinges on the spiritual, not so much.
Eventually I did write L about their work and received a generous, extensive response. The divinations are in fact intended to be open-ended, just as the spells are intended to apply generally toward the improvement of society rather than to any particular person who might buy them.
After I finished writing all the above, it seemed appropriate to consult my tarot deck, given to me by the same person who gave me the astrological consultation as a gift, who also gave me a bloodstone that I take with me most every time I travel. The card I drew? What else could it be but the Fool, reversed?
Wine
Villa Tolnay Olaszrizling Csobáncz 2021. When I think about Hungarian wine, it’s the dessert wine Tokaji that comes to mind. The grape used in its production, furmint, has in recent years been used to produce dry varieties that have met only middling success in the US. This bottle of the unfamiliar Olaszrizling caught my eye because I drank a lot of dry German and Austrian Riesling over the summer. But my associations were all wrong: Olaszrizling is a completely unrelated grape, nor does it taste anything like what you’d stereotype as Hungarian. Rather it it produces a crisp, tangy, pleasantly bumptious white that’s like a mountain Aligoté—or a grimy Riesling, if you prefer.
Villa Tolnay has a stronger than expected nose, a little fumé and with an tinge of the compost bucket. A few strands of bubbles cling to the bottom of the first glass. For an affordable bottle (price being another good reason to shop Magyar), it makes a strong progression over the palate. First it’s dry-sweet and taut as a garrote but it takes an herbaceous twist (tarragon?), and a subsequent swampy undertow hairpins into a sharp tang at the end. As it sits open, the wine loses some of its tasty rot and as well as some of its sweetness. But if you manage to leave a glass or two in the bottom of the bottle overnight, you’ll find that the remnants become oddly cloying, like the Tokaji with which I had mistakenly associated it in the first place.
Music
“Pretty Canary”—Tongue in the Mind. It’s a pick feels a little on the nose for my milieu, but I couldn’t resist: this track rocks.
Tongue in the Mind is an art-adjacent supergroup of sorts, comprising writer/artist/DJ Juliana Huxtable, multi-instrumentalist Joe Rinaldo Heffernan (aka Jealous Orgasm), and electronic dance musician Dylan Shir (also known as Via App). Map their various territories and you’ll find they meet in the land of—surprise?—psychedelic rock. “Pretty Canary” starts simply, with a buzzing noise like an insect rattling against a windowpane. Over it, Huxtable begins to recite nursery-rhyme-like lyrics about an eponymous cherry-colored bird—Tongue in the Mind’s own white rabbit, except here it’s the band leading it astray rather than the other way around.
Over the course of nearly seven minutes—or five, depending on the edit—the song builds, spreads out, and evolves, with shredding guitar and drum fills that accelerate and decelerate sensually. The results would satisfy a devotee of Soft Machine or Acid Mothers Temple. Occasionally the instrumentation drops down low to make room for Huxtable’s casual charisma, her vocals sliding into overdub at a critical moment where a different level of reality, perhaps, offers itself up for exploration. The echo gets heavy as the bird downs a pill from Huxtable’s windowsill, “peaking until it tweaked,” as she hypnotically repeats. The band has an EP forthcoming but I want an hour of them onstage, and whatever lysergic seeds Huxtable has lying around her garden blue.