Galleryspeak

A ball is tossed in the air, a ship by waves at sea. Ideas are tossed about in exchange or experiment. A letter is tossed off hurriedly, drink tossed back, a salad simply tossed. Frequently though, when we speak of what is tossed we speak of what is thrown away, discarded, by implication rejected as broken, without function or worth. Such a process is manifold: remote and familiar, mechanical and humane, public and private, symbolic and startlingly real. Its end is likewise uncertain. What is tossed might not disappear, but stain, haunt and reassert itself in any number of surprising and predictable ways. It might be witnessed, noted, described, alluded to, remembered, transcribed, relived either as a narrative whole or in self-reflecting shards of a broken mind's eye. It might be regenerated, remapped, reconnected, reused, reformed, resurrected either as an organic whole or in unnameable pieces drawn from the unspeakable body of the old. It might even cycle back towards those earlier, greener tosses, the careless cast or fling, the upward motion of admixture and, potentially, renewal. Who knows?