Untitled/New York City II / digital photograph / 2011 © Omer Wasim
I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.
_Thomas James
Untitled/New York City I / digital photograph / 2011
© Omer Wasim
For our own private reasons
We live in each for an hour.
Stranger, I take your body and its seasons
Aware the moon has gone a little sour
For us…
_Thomas James
Still…Falling, Breathless, and Torn Again / watercolour on paper (60 individual paintings) / site specific installation - length 30’, width ’3, height 5’ / 2009
© Omer Wasim
Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of time, therefore we give back credit were it is due: time.
We are synchronized, now and forever.
I love you.
_Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996)
The Fall / reclaimed shingles, saw dust, nails / 2011
© Omer Wasim
The slight flush of his jaw through a whisper of stubble.
_Omer Wasim
Untitled II / digital photograph / 2010 Edited by Anthony Villaflores © Omer Wasim
Narcissus and I are not unacquainted, to be sure, but I also had a confused romantic idea of the moment when Picasso showed Gertrude Stein her portrait and she said, “I don’t look like this,” only to be informed, “You will.”
In a cold studio off La Brea, backed by a huge wave of white paper like in Blow-UP:
It felt so weirdly natural-the opposite of looking in a mirror, and like being naked at last, perfectly natural, as one wanted to be at 20. It didn’t somehow matter whether one looked good or not. One was a man, pure and simple.
The body as memorial, locked in time-all those ones. While Roger sat in a chair behind the lights, leafing magazines and loyally waiting out this peacock show of vanity.
I think that unconsciously a lot of us were beginning to be pierced with dread of deterioration and lonely death, but again it was slow and subtle, the needles more like acupuncture.
_Borrowed Time
Untitled / digital photograph / 2010 © Omer Wasim
Sometimes we project movies in our living room. We hang a sheet on the brick wall and keep it up with the door closed. I came home late and walked into a screening. My roommate was twisted with a man on the coach. I proceeded to my room underground and heard small taps above me . I saw them through the ceiling passionate and smiling, sat under my covers with a book and felt, even in spaces of silence, that first cursor to love, mixing in the room above me.
_Brittany Mendez
Stills from Entropy / HD video / 4 minute and 30 seconds / 2010
© Omer Wasim
We said farewell and I left his room. But something drew me back. He had fallen into a light sleep. I stood there and looked at him. So peaceful, like an ancient child. He opened his eyes and smiled. “Back so soon?” And then again to sleep.
So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
_Just Kids
Borrowed Time / field monitors, dvd players, 16mm black and white film transferred to video, white paint, pedestals, ceramic bowls, rusted nails, water / length 10’, width 5’, height 4’ / 2010
© Omer Wasim
