Aran 2005

Sean Scully made this photograph, called Aran, and what hits me first is the light. The whole thing's an exercise in seeing, of course. The blocks are dry-stacked, a wall doing its thing with no mortar. Scully’s known for those stripes and grids in his paintings, right? But here, it's all about texture. Look at the way the light catches the edges of those stones, making them pop, kind of uneven, like the way encaustic can look. And the colors, the blacks, whites, and grays doing a real delicate dance. They remind me of Eva Hesse's latex pieces, like someone took a mold from reality and gave it a new, weird life. It’s like Scully's telling us that life, just like art, is about seeing and letting things be, bumps and all.