Things I Forget To Tell Myself

A fragmented view of a city provides this poetic examination of disclosing and withholding—what is and isn’t seen, and once it is seen, how is it read?

“In New York artist Shelly Silver’s Things I Forget to Tell Myself, a fragmented textual statement… is interspersed with imagery culled from NYC, much of it cropped by the camera operator’s outstretched hand. Buildings, windows, signs, pedestrians, cops, and doors constitute a continuum of access and obstruction. The sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous patterns of disclosure and withholding, recognition and inobservance, are scrutinized to reveal the imprints of psychological processes and cultural codes, while testing boundaries between seeing and reading.”

—Michael Nash, Channels for A Changing TV (Long Beach Museum of Art, 1991)