RIP VAN WINKLE

Captured in the Catskill Mountains, James Marilyn stages Rip Van Winkle suspended between worlds. Drawing from Washington Irving's American myth and from the region itself — its landscape, its uneven passage of time — the work situates the figure in a state of dislocation. The costume, assembled that morning from whatever was at hand, makes no claim to accuracy.

Photographed by New York artist Lisa Kirk, who wandered into the woods over 20 years ago, the image carries its own distance from origin: a sleeper who closes his eyes in one century and opens them in another, uncertain which one has moved.

Staged on the eve of America's 250th year, Rip Van Winkle asks what happens when history outpaces the mind's ability to follow it.