Exodus III
Across the three installations of Exodus, Laufer traces the fragile intersection of a child’s recollection with the monumental weight of history. Emerging from times of ongoing conflict, these works hold a steady, composed perspective, suggesting multiple possible horizons.
Suspended and layered in space, painted scrolls descend from ceiling to floor, proposing an image that extends beyond its visible surface. Their form invokes the handscroll tradition, in which narrative is never revealed all at once but gradually, through movement and time. Only a portion of the story is visible at any given moment; the rest remains withheld. In this sense, Exodus III inhabits the space between storytelling and image-making, where showing and hiding operate simultaneously, and where what is visible and what is concealed together shape meaning.
The paintings do not interpret or describe these recollections; rather, they create the setting in which they may be encountered. Fragments of Laufer’s father’s recollections appear within the painted surfaces, not as captions or explanations, but as interruptions — brief disclosures embedded in the visual field. Like memories themselves, they surface, recede, and drift.
The painted lines swirl like currents, dissipate like breath, and flow with quiet persistence. Their repetition introduces rhythm and temporality — a visual echo of the sea’s continuous motion and of memory’s tendency to return altered each time. As in the earlier chapters of Exodus, the work oscillates between vastness and intimacy, presence and absence.
Exodus III becomes a threshold space, neither entirely material nor entirely narrative, shaped by what can be seen and what must be imagined.
Photos © Connolly Weber Photography
