New York, NY - My Pet Ram is pleased to announce Never Shine Sun, a solo exhibition by Dominic Terlizzi, on view from January 3 through February 2, 2025. Please join us for the opening reception on January 3rd from 6-9pm.

In Never Shine Sun, Terlizzi shows us places where the sun is setting, eclipsing, and rising. These transitional times are when the body is waking or falling asleep, and when the mind is partly dreaming. To understand the day, a drifting mind runs diagnostics, processing all that has transpired. In the vacuum of night, while life is paused, different spectacles of the imagination can begin. Hierarchies for establishing meaning are in flux, and another narrative is built when the mind hangs onto a reality that is no longer clear. 

In a new series of figurative paintings, both implied trompe l’oeil and mimetic cast objects cohabitate the tightly mosaiced surfaces. Viewers can engage the paintings’ surfaces containing domestic familiarity. Textures from objects like leaves, doilies, coins, breads, and paper towels allow us to imagine sensations like taste, smell and touch, and we experience synaesthetic incongruence between the images and their object associations. Slivers of cast crackers are used to illustrate rays of light piercing the scenes at dramatic angles. The darkness of night arrives in the form of black snowflakes, keys, and coins speckling the compositions like inverted vision flares. Sunrise gradients take on the texture of napkins and placemats.

In Black Sun Run, a mob of men racing toward an eclipse never reach the finish line, which conjures images of a flash finish or painted Olympiads on ancient vases. The figures’ contours are mapped out in fingerprints, forming curvilinear geometric lines that lock the bodies into a grid. The race trods over dark fragments of breads, wallets, and seashells. Fruit remains whole and unbruised, even as it’s trampled underfoot. A pixelated eye and pigeon lurk below and observe the passing race. In Demolition Derby, the only painting in which headlights take on the role of the sun, a car collision lacks any real danger or damages. Perfectly ripe fruits are perched on spectators' heads and hover on car hoods. A pigeon sits with the crowd and watches as pink orbs land on their cheeks as though they are blushing. Onlookers are complacent and complicit in the chaos. In other examples of twilight imagery, a blue crab collects coins at dawn. A cat catches a bird at the water’s edge, but is startled by the viewer while caught in the act of killing. Another bird sleeps in mid-flight, unaware of any danger. 

At daybreak there is a chance to begin again, but at a loss. We lose what is offered by the imagination as darkness creeps in. The desire to remain in this transitional space is best described in a song by Greg Brown from which the show borrows its title: 

There's a drop of dew hanging on each blade of grass
Hang on and tremble - don't let the night pass
Light on the horizon - linger on and on
Oh, it's jus' some city - it can't be the dawn

Never Shine Sun will be on view beginning Friday, January 3rd through Sunday, February 2nd, 2024. The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street in the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday - Sunday from 12-6pm and by appointment. For more information, please email info@mypetram.com.