Untitled Tunnel

FIRST OF ALL, ELLIOTT DID NOT LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT and he avoided doing so at all costs. He didn’t know how long the ‘business,’ as he furiously referred to it, with Untitled Tunnel (mixed media, Yasumoto, 2001) been going on. One morning, as he had clipped past the installment, he felt something was different. Something in the careful rhythm of the Hopson Gallery, where he had so lovingly hung each painting himself, waving off anxious packs of assistants, where he had fretted over pedestal heights and light sources, something was off. He slowed his machine gun steps and stood there, staring at the piece like a puzzle.

Then, he saw it.

Two buildings in the skyline were taller than they had been. They were quietly, but undeniably, higher than the rest of the skyline, like little towers. Two identical towers, to be precise.

Twins.

He shook it off but a week later the scene repeated itself. Again he blinked, thought, focused, concentrated. No. Judging by perspective, they were at least ten stories taller. He was sure of it. They were growing.

He was positive that they had not been there before. The piece was created by a Japanese artist and donated to the museum in early 2002 as a part of an international arts condolence group. The towers had been deliberately omitted. Yet here they were. Defiantly, mysteriously growing and completely annihilating the balance of the Hopson Gallery that Elliott Letscher had worked very, very hard to create.

It was, in a word, inconvenient.