Richard Clements,
Day Treadeth On Night
Paul Kuhn Gallery 
Calgary, Alberta
May 17—June 30, 2013

However we see our world, it is very much through the acquisition and use of language, especially speech, that we individually make our peace with it. Even though speech seems to be deeply, consciously organized and controlled, it also contains the unconscious, the spontaneous and the unpredictable. One of its mysteries is that we can begin a sentence without being able to find evidence within ourselves of having worked out in advance how that sentence will end. Yet to have begun, to have been able to correctly place one word after the next to build a coherent thought, we must have done precisely that.

Richard Clements’ Day Treadeth On Night demands language, but is also deeply engaged with mystery and arcane knowledge. It is animated by those qualities of speech that surpass language, and is an appeal for us to see not just with our eyes, but to reconnect with the material world and see with our bodies. Language is important but not more so than things like the hard shine of copper, the roughness of sand cast aluminum and the soft slumpiness of string.

Of the eight works, three are exemplars of Day Treadeth On Night as an extended meditation on the way the mind inscribes itself on the material of the world. Day Treads On Night (After Gill) are

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