Obsidian Contract (2010) features a legal contract written backwards and reflected in a black mirror, a device which has a long tradition within witchcraft and the occult in many cultures, and which was also used by landscape painters in the Romantic era to imbue a scene with a dramatic tonality.
The contract, written to involve the viewer, proposes the exhibition space visible in the mirror as a new area of publicly-owned land, in which certain activities considered illegal in public space at different times, such as the grazing of animals or sexual activity, are made permissible.
[excerpted from the artist’s website]
Please note as part of Carey Young’s forthcoming solo presentation at the Dallas Museum of Art, it is expected that this work be made available for loan to the DMA from February through April 2017.