rot semantics
manuel arturo abreu
May 29th – June 27th

I have a hand & a hand, & hands will fly,
what I have will sprout harsh flowers:
I harvest oceans & eat the dawn,
I was confused, now knowing nothing is inherent.
This is the sky that is bright and mud,
try and dodge its rage, find a fit silhouette.
Darkness has eyes, silence has ears, rain smells
like spit falling louder than coffee. I'm in a room.
Forgetting is a room of moonstruck intensities,
a guest's hand, caressed the way words are understood–
The room is a morpheme, it's shrinking forever:
once there's only empty space where it used to be,
the void will mean everything, ever. God's name is
the combination of every utterance ever made and any
possible utterance, in any language, in any given order.
And truly, truly we find that this is nothing.

haul gallery presents the fifth solo exhibition by Dominican artist manuel arturo abreu. Raised in the Bronx, abreu is a non-disciplinary artist working with what is at hand in a process of magical thinking, with attention to ritual aspects of aesthetics. They live and work in Portland, OR. They co-founded and co-run home school, a free pop-up art school in Portland in its sixth year of curriculum.