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—the landscape and the uneven passage of time—the work situates the figure in a state of dislocation.

Photographed by a New York artist who left Manhattan 20 years ago and wandered into the woods, the image carries a shared distance from origin. A figure falls asleep in one world and wakes in another. Time collapses. Context shifts.

Created on the eve of America’s 250th year, the work is a meditation on regional imagination and the speed of progress. What happens when history moves faster than the body can follow? The Catskills stand in for reflection, suspension, and the sense that anything might happen next.