'Plot' at GallerySKE

Artist Sreshta Rit Premnath's note to the recent solo show, entitled 'Plot', at GallerySKE:

I am perplexed, forgetting why I entered the room. Why am I here? As if reason stands separate from action. When asked "Why did you do this?" I recollect a series of events, which appear to inexorably lead to my present circumstance. If asked again "Why did you do this?" do I produce a new constellation or refer to my previous plan? "What is the plot?" As if a plot, like a key, is separate from a story and yet necessary for its comprehension.

II. Corpse

A mystery begins with a corpse. A chalk line that delineates the prone body—a minimum boundary that separates figure from ground. Eventually this boundary too disappears. Every form of presence has its analogous form of absence. Remove the word "form" from the previous sentence. 1-1?1, 1-1?2, 1-1?3, 1-1?4, 1-1?5, etc.

III. Property

The stray dog that circles a site the size of its body. Asleep, invisible until stepped upon it bursts into flight, baring its teeth or squealing. The volatile and vulnerable claim of the sleeping dog. Before this was my land, there was land. Before there was land, there was nothing. Yet, knowing nothing leaves me ignorant of concepts such as "my," "this" and "land." "With false documents and brute force the land was extorted from them." While the concept of ownership may be fundamentally unstable, this instability does not displace the ethical issue of rightful ownership. The two concepts are irresolvable but interconnected.

Law is both the means of instituting and of maintaining private property. Then there are those who occupy the fragile margin of this law. Their property is provided only so long as they are useful or invisible. The sleeping dog has no right besides its insistent occupation of space. Yet, we know that this may be wrenched from it in a moment. What is this existence, this right to be, that precedes (or exceeds) property?