George Quasha
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George Quasha is an artist and poet who works across mediums, exploring a principle in common within language, sculpture, drawing, video, sound, installation, and performance. This principle, "axiality," he defines as "the principle of free-moving order, liminality, and precarious, spontaneous emergence."
His Axial Stones are delicately balanced sculptures of two (occasionally three) stones positioned one upon another at the most precarious point discovered. Quasha’s sculptural process, more tactile and body-centered than visual, follows strict rules: specific “found” stones must be felt to attract each other; one stone must find its place on the other at the smallest available point of contact; no adhesive is permissible; and neither stone may be modified in any way. In this context, "axial" refers to the invisible axis that comes into focus at the moment of precarious balance. In addition to Axial Stones, Quasha has created Axial Drawings, executed with two hands simultaneously, and Axial Poems, discovering points of charged variability in language.
Solo exhibitions of his Axial Stones and Axial Drawings have taken place at the Baumgartner Gallery in New York (Chelsea), the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. This work is also featured in the book, Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance, Foreword by Carter Ratcliff (North Atlantic Books: Berkeley, 2006).
For his video installation work “art is: Speaking Portraits (in the performative indicative),” he has recorded over 700 artists, poets, and composers (in 11 countries and 21 languages). Just the face of each person is shown at the moment of saying, for instance, what art is. The work has been exhibited at the Snite Museum of Art (University of Notre Dame), at White Box in Chelsea, at the Samuel Dorsky Museum (SUNY New Paltz), and in several other countries (including France and India), and has been featured in several biennials (Wroclaw, Poland; Geneva, Switzerland; Kingston, New York). Further extensions of this work in speaking portraiture include “myth is” and “peace is.” His other work in axial video (including “Pulp Friction,” “Axial Objects,” “Verbal Objects,” “Axial Landscapes”) has appeared internationally in museums, galleries, schools, and biennials. A 30-year performance collaboration (video/language/sound) continues with Gary Hill and Charles Stein.
His other 14 books include poetry (Somapoetics, Giving the Lily Back Her Hands, Ainu Dreams [with Chie Hasegawa], Preverbs [forthcoming]; anthologies (America a Prophecy [with Jerome Rothenberg], Open Poetry [with Ronald Gross], An Active Anthology [with Susan Quasha], The Station Hill Blanchot Reader [with Charles Stein]); and writing on art (Gary Hill: Language Willing; with Charles Stein: Tall Ships, HanD HearD/liminal objects, Viewer). A new book, An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Texts, Foreword by Lynne Cooke, is forthcoming from Ediciones Poligrafa (Barcelona), also in collaboration with Charles Stein.
In 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in video art. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry. He has taught at Stony Brook University (SUNY), Bard College, New School University (Graduate Anthropology Department), and Naropa University. With Susan Quasha he is founder/publisher of Barrytown/Station Hill Press, whose mission is to challenge and expand conceptions of human possibility. Born on July 14, 1942 in White Plains, New York, he now lives in Barrytown, New York.
[edit] Select bibliography
- America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present (with Jerome Rothenberg], Random House, 1973)
- Open Poetry (with Ronald Gross, Simon & Schuster, 1973)
- Somapoetics (Sumac Press, 1973)
- An Active Anthology (Sumac Press, 1974)
- Word-Yum (Metapoetics Press, 1974)
- Giving the Lily Back Her Hands (Station Hill Press, 1979)
- HanD HearD/liminal objects: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 1 (with Charles Stein, Station Hill Press, 1997)
- Tall Ships: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 2 (with Charles Stein, Station Hill Press, 1997)
- Viewer: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 3 (with Charles Stein, Station Hill Press, 1997)
- Ainu Dreams (with Chie Hasegawa, Station Hill Press, 1999)
- The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction & Literary Essays (ed. George Quasha, Station Hill Press, 1999)
- Gary Hill: Language Willing (further/art and Boise Art Museum, 2002)
- Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance (North Atlantic, 2006)
