Is it possible to map a thought, an idea, and follow its movements? Ceré Pontiff introduces viewers to this question in the two works presented in this exhibit.
The 4½ minute video Untitled (Parking Ticket) starts on a black screen with a running time code. We then inhabit the point of view of a person walking on a city sidewalk. Her pace gradually quickens. When she reaches her parked car, there is a parking ticket on the windshield. After a flash of orange, the video ends on an unstamped black screen.
Somewhere in this footage lies the moment that a thought, “I may have a parking ticket”, shifts from a state of latency to a state of conscious awareness. The speed of the footsteps correlates with a growing anticipation and urgency (“I may have to pay a fine”). The 3D footage is meant to be viewed without 3D glasses and the running time code is not synchronized to the viewer’s time, thus placing the video at a remove from reality, rather than a faithful re-creation of it. The artificiality signals the intent of the viewing experience as heuristic. The artist represents the emergence and development of a thought in consciousness—a process that exists beyond the physical laws of nature—with a simple re-enactment in the everyday language of the physical.
Untitled (Three Brothers) is a cycling jersey that has been printed with the following anecdote, in a manner that snakes from front to back and around the body:
Three brothers are watching television. The program ends and the youngest suggests watching the next program. The other brothers decide they want to watch something else. An argument ensues. The father chimes in, addressing the youngest boy: “Your brothers want to watch something else – don’t be selfish,” to which the boy replies, “Why is it better for two people to be selfish than for one person to be selfish?”
The anecdote, which resembles a koan used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning, challenges the conclusions that one naturally might draw from the incontrovertible truth that numerically, two is greater than one. For example, does “Two is greater than one” imply that two is better than one or that two of a sentiment makes that sentiment more right than one of another? As usual, the answer is not as straightforward as it would seem. The anecdote forces the reader to transcend ordinary reason and draws attention to the many ways, arguably all legitimate, an agreed-upon fact can be interpreted.
Why has Ponctif chosen to reproduce this text on a racing jersey and in this manner? Beyond its role as the medium, Untitled (Three Brothers) illustrates how meaning in language starts but does not end with legibility and literal comprehension. Meaning-making occurs in layers, starting with the gross (or most readily apparent) level and progressing to subtler ones. Here, the cyclist who wears the jersey animates the text, representing the thinker who surfaces a thought or idea. The viewer encounters this text on the physical layer of clothing. To read the entire text, the viewer must act by walking around the stationary cyclist or rotating the cyclist. It would be nearly impossible to read or make sense of the words if the cyclist were moving in space and time on a bicycle.
But legibility and literal comprehension, while necessary, are not always sufficient to make meaning of a text. One must take into account context, subtext, and metatext, too, all of which are vectors, with magnitudes and directions, that act upon the thought or idea that is represented by the text. These vectors may be internal or external to the thinker, just as the cyclist wearing the jersey supplies his own energy to power the bicycle from Point A to Point B, while meeting with counterforces from headwinds and road resistance that can alter his path and destination or even keep him at rest. Again, Ponctif works in the everyday language of the physical, this time, to illustrate that once a thought or idea emerges, it can be dislocated, repositioned, transformed by innumerable internal and external forces.
Spoken and written language is a system, based on words and the rules that govern them, to describe, express, and communicate thoughts and ideas. Art, writ large, comprises many languages for representing thoughts and ideas. As with a text, context, subtext, and metatext often are at play—no matter what the medium and materials. Legibility and a literal depiction of reality often are not the point. For example, Cubism abandoned representation from a fixed, single viewpoint, fragmenting one reality and depicting multiple realities in the same stroke. Both works in this presentation employ metaphors based in the embodied physical experience, giving the viewer an accessible way to consider thoughts and ideas with a distanced curiosity in order to discern how they emerge and evolve in consciousness.
Works in the Exhibit:
1. Untitled (Three Brothers)
2025, Custom-printed bicycle racing jersey
2.Untitled (Stellated Dodecahedron)
2025, Bambooo and balls
3. Untitled (Parking Ticket)
2012, 3D video, length 0:02:00
Untitled (Three Brothers),
2025, Custom-printed bicycle racing jersey.
Untitled (Stellated Dodecahedron)
2025, Bambooo and balls
Instilation shot of Untitled (Parking Ticket), 2012, 3D video, length 0:02:00
Untitled (Parking Ticket), 2012,
3D video, length 0:02:00