Through those Doors Awaits the Memories of a Lifetime
Your first visit to an art gallery can be a lot like an archaeologist discovering a long lost forgotten society. You walk in with a sort of gleeful expectation of having your senses aroused and stimulated, one way or another. And as you dig out and explore each new aspect of the gallery your imagination soars into a sort of analytical phase as it tries to interpret what it is absorbing.
If it’s a large gallery, just the building could trigger the imagination. Each turn might be like the twisting undulation of an unexplored tunnel with a marvelously mysterious cavern at the end that holds beautiful wonders for the mind to behold. Colorful breathtaking wonders and magnificent objects full of texture. As one item is explored your eye catches another, so you move to view the new discovery, only to find that the one you are leaving now looks so much different now that you’ve moved and are looking at it from another perspective. So you stand there caught between these two wonders and marvel at the beauty of both.
Through your exploration you might encounter unusual symmetrical and asymmetrical forms that seem to jut out of the floor like time crafted stalagmites. You wonder at these sculpted forms and find it hard to fathom how any human hands could possibly have created anything so beautiful. They just stand there enveloped in light that is perfectly placed to highlight the varied nuances of their flowing form, and then, you see another that isn’t as flowing. Its lines, in fact, are rough and jagged, like the craggy face of an ocean cliff. And you imagine how the light fades in and out of its fissures like it would the pocked surface of the moon. But it’s not ugly; its beauty lies in the dichotomy between its smooth and rough textures and the way the light plays teasingly with the shadows.
Imagine this, the first visit to a place like the New York Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art or the National Gallery in London. It will leave quite an impression on anybody that is lucky enough to get the chance.