Butler’s threadbare saffron works-on-silk line the perimeter of the back gallery, floating forward and back, filling and falling as if breathing. Suspended by invisible supports and backlit, the delicate veils with their enigmatic marks and hand-drawn symbols precipitate a feeling of reverence, a sense of encounter with that which is unknown, other. Here, the difference between presence and absence, material and mystical, is difficult to delineate, recalling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation that spirit is merely matter “reduced to an extreme thinness. O so thin.” Sitting on the bench against the only unadorned wall during the opening reception, I watched lively clusters of people stream in from the main room and fall suddenly silent, arrested by what was and was not there.
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