Still Point

Larissa Bates, Amy Brener, Rachelle Bussières, Langdon Graves, Olivia Jia, Carolina Jiménez, Abigail Lucien, Heidi Norton, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Jonathan Ryan, Tracy Thomason "At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time." —T.S. Eliot Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Still Point, a group exhibition featuring eleven artists who challenge conventional perceptions of time, co-curated by Caitlin Monachino and Gretchen Kraus. The exhibition takes its title from a line in T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton (1936), the first of his renowned Four Quartets: “At the still point of the turning world.” In the poem, Eliot meditates on the paradoxes of time—its brevity and boundlessness, inertia and momentum, permanence and constant transition. Influenced by early twentieth-century movements such as existentialism and phenomenology, Eliot suggests that spiritual insight emerges through a release from linear time. In this state—often described as the “Eternal Now”—past, present, and future are experienced as an integrated whole, where the present holds both echoes of the past and anticipation of the future. Through material, memory, and mythology, the artists in Still Point open portals into layered temporalities, where reflection and possibility converge. In this suspended space, the limits of chronology dissolve, allowing for a deeper reckoning with change, continuity, and presence. The exhibition unfolds across three thematic frameworks: Time as Medium and Form—works that engage with time through process, structure, and temporal markers; Time as Cultural Memory and Legacy—works that explore time through identity, generational knowledge, and familial histories; and Time as Myth and Narrative—works that draw on storytelling, speculative worlds, and reimagined cosmologies. With its conceptual foundation grounded in poetry, the exhibition is accompanied by a reading library that offers visitors additional pathways into the work on view. The curators invited each participating artist to recommend one or two books that resonate with their practice or with the show's central ideas. Spanning genres from science fiction and memoir to short stories and experimental fiction, these selections form a collective bibliography that has informed, inspired, and supported the artists’ thinking, extending the exhibition’s scope beyond the gallery. Still Point is curated by Caitlin Monachino and Gretchen Kraus, recipients of the 2025 Curatorial Open Call.