ENDLESSSUMMER—Erin Thurlow

Dimensions Variable (DV) presents a solo project titled ENDLESSSUMMER by Miami-based artist Erin Thurlow. The exhibition opens on October 22, 2022 and will be ongoing on the Building Exterior.

ENDLESSSUMMER is a direct outgrowth from the LED sign, Alarm, Thurlow installed inside the Dimensions Variable gallery for his solo show in 2020. At the time we discussed the idea of putting that work outside, but opted instead to mount it indoors and have it looping endlessly on the DV website as part of the gallery’s digital works program. The thinking is that, as a sign it should be visible to as many people as possible. Thurlow is now revisiting the idea in a new work. Then, as now, one of his main interests is the way time is experienced as a group phenomenon. Time, as explicitly named in the word “endless”.

There is a lot to say about the idea of an endless summer. It is literally a Florida selling point, as featured on particular state license plates. At the same time, the climate crisis threatens to make it a terrifying, global reality. Despite its supposed charms, The Endless Summer(1966), the surf film from which Thurlow steals the phrase (and Florida bought the licensing rights), can clearly be seen as a Neo-colonialist advertisement for a privileged, American jet-set middle class of the 1960s.

Thurlow’s sign takes the form of an advertisement, too. Placed close to the top of the DV building, the glowing sign resembles a digital sunset, whose light casts a spell under which time expands into a long, strange moment.

Time never stops, but our capacity to understand this, to awaken to its passing and to act, seems increasingly difficult. ENDLESSSUMMER is also an alarm, a warning disguised as a melancholy come-on.