Lane Sell

Far From All Others (Philoctetes), 2020
Acrylic, ink, and digital print on canvas
2 panels 16 x 24 inches each

None of These Things Is a Surprise to Me (Philoctetes), 2020
Acrylic and digital print on canvas
2 panels 16 x 24 inches each

“Philoctetes is a Sophocles tragedy about the end of the Trojan War that deals with allegiance, betrayal, and sickness. I started rereading it at the beginning of lockdown. I began working with two facing pages of a side-by-side Greek and English edition (Loeb p. 274 and 275). The play doesn't lack for drama, but these particular pages are fairly mundane. I would choose a few words and obliterate the rest of the text with reflective metallic paint, or in some cases replace the text with photographs of me taken by Maria Vassiliou in the summer of 2019. Often, fanciful star charts or constellations appear as celestial illustrations of the words selected or as intuitions about the nodes of meaning within the body.”

Lane Sell is a native of the Virgin Islands, a graduate of Deep Springs College and Columbia University, and founder and Master Printer of Shoestring Press in Crown Heights since 2014. His work 75-Foot Riot will be on display at FiveMyles in Crown Heights in October.