The images and text in artist and educator Joshua Lutz’s third monograph Mind The Gap unravels a story of attempting to find some assemblage of truth in the chaos of hierarchy, class and privilege. It is a journey for clarity, hijacked by sex, addiction, and mental illness. As we travelled from a black and white world of photographs into color the reader is confronted with a space of groundlessness. Protagonists in the story are found clinging and grasping to everything they believe to be true.
“There are these two worlds vying for my attention at all times,” says Joshua Lutz. “In one of them this diagnosis has metastasized to the brain and I am no longer able to care for my children. The bank takes over the house and I become an albatross in hands not fully formed. In the other world, noise shuts down for a very split second and the smallest fragment of light becomes a pathway to immortality. Color is no longer a placeholder and language is no longer a tool. You can read this as small moments of clarity or large chunks of confusion. Either way, they mix with the noise and become gaps I long to possess.”
These images point to the physical, mental and psychological gap we are confronted with in our daily lives. It is a reference to the gap between thoughts as well as the gap between coherence and confusion. Caught between thinking something is one thing and the reality of what it is, Mind the Gap functions as a reminder of the effort needed to let go of the stories we tell ourselves and rest for a brief moment in the space between thoughts.
Joshua Lutz, Mind The Gap
Published by Schilt Publishing
£40 | $50 | €45
