Todd Stone / Sarah Charlesworth 911 exhibits



Todd Stone: Empty Tub III
Oil on Linen 2001



Todd Stone: Empty Tub IV
Oil on Linen 2001



Sarah Charlesworth: Unidentified woman, Hotel Corona de Aragon, Madrid 1980
-Black and white mural print 42” x 78” / Unique print

 Empty Tub III gives me the feeling of something that has been around for a long time, that has history, a story. Just as the towers have a history, just as do the people that had been in and out of those buildings. It makes you start to imagine what these stories could have been. It also makes me think of the images of the dust settling on everything after the towers fell. The brief silence and stillness there was after the chaos. In Empty Tub IV you get the feeling of a blank slate, a new beginning, a rebuilding. But also a cover up. Cleaning up and not leaving a trace of what happened so that there is no real way to discover what really happened, no evidence.

Unidentified woman, to me, is a very powerful print. It gives off such sadness, such a sense of loss. It seems as if time has stopped and you have no choice but to replay over and over the emotions you felt when you saw the events unfold on that traumatic day. A still frame of death and profound sadness.

The Empty Tub series at first glance seem like just paintings of tubs at different times of the day. But when you add the context of the 911 events, they take on a completely different life, purpose. It expresses how event the most ordinary of things can take on a whole new life when you add a scenario, a purpose of being to them. It is very different from the ’Unidentified woman’ print where the subject is very literal. It is about death and this jumps out at you not only because you can see it is a body suspended in air but also because of the colors in the print. The darkness and fuzzy image immediately take you to that dark place of tragedy.