About the work

There’s a common trick to the light, not that it intends to deceive. Sometimes it just arrives, sudden and uninvited, making everything sharp and flat at once. It’s the kind of light that pulls at the corners of a room, revealing not just dust motes but the very act of holding still. And when a person is caught in it, suddenly, without warning, they might just find themselves performing the self, a little too brightly, a little too much for the moment. The smile then, it’s not for anyone else, not really. It’s for the light itself, an offering. And the room, it plays along, holding its breath, a brief, silent stage. A study in Feigned contentment and Weariness held in the same frame. In dialogue with Larry Sultan's domestic staging.