Gate of Memories: Things Forgotten

Found Object Gallery | Old as Adam

Enter the Gate of Memories for a collection of objects that preserve what is lost, erase what is indelible, and remember what is forgotten.

These things reflect the facets of memory: the glimmering immediacy of a treasured moment, the darkling layers of the unconscious, the frayed edges preceding oblivion.

But walk further through the gate, past the crumbling monuments raised to those who wished to be remembered, and enter the cluttered void of the forgotten.

Our memories are unknowable to others. They surface in our consciousness and shimmer, only to distort, wither, and in the end, die with us. We ourselves may be remembered, but our own memories — their contours and colors discernible only to us — vanish into the void.

And yet in this collection, those lost memories are here, still inscrutable, but nevertheless in hand. Their contours and colors materialize now, for us, even though the individual memory-makers are lost to time. Standing before these things, the mind’s eye of another becomes our own and we witness the refraction of a moment held within the consciousness of someone else — a startling, intimate, and privileged view.

A swimming hole.
A rock.
A sightseeing tour.
A dresser drawer.
A heartbroken summer.

These are the memories of others, but they are also our own. If the mind of each person is a mystery, then the objects here reveal the shared mystery within us all.

Enter the Gate of Memories and encounter objects that may teach us that the most sublime fate of all is not to remember or be remembered, but to forget and be forgotten.

Gate of Memories: Things Forgotten
Fall 2021
Found Object Gallery
Old as Adam Antiques & Americana
125 Benefit Street
Providence, RI