LOS ANGELES, CA.- Is simultaneity not simply a question of scale? Things often happen at the same time, but are magnitudes apart. To be simultaneous places more emphasis on an imagined shared present moment—yet things occur in varying scales of time, things occur despite or because of other occurrences, things are always occurring with or without each other. My friend Clara often tellsme this. “It’s always both,” she would say. Perhaps she meant it not in the sense that both must be true simultaneously, but that if both were in fact true, then we might be able to see things differently, see them to their full potential.

Tender are the buttons that fasten us to one another, that fasten one occurrence to the next—aswe chat, they gather like dust in the corner of the room. Time melts away and settles in rings ofsediment as we consider what came first, what followed, what I am to you in this moment or thenext. Gertrude Stein begins Tender Buttons by declaring a carafe a cousin. Objects as relativeshelp us understand what they really are to us—cousin, in its familial ambiguity, is a word thatavoids and incites the urge to map webs of relations between you and I. What then is mother?How does the web of relations change when one goes from friend to lover?

These things are seldom within our control: time, love, family, friendship. They reverberatethrough the tense threads that string me to you and from one to the next. They pulse withelectricity, light up in a jolt, and waft pollen and dander into the air. It is difficult to navigate aworld where every surface buzzes with energy, refracting and dispersing light. As she leads usthrough the eye-white sky-light white-light district of the moon in her poem Lunar Baedeker,Mina Loy speaks of cyclones of ecstatic dust whirling.

Mimi Park’s work dots the space like a constellation of things. A stack of books from the artist’spersonal library is adorned with tinsel, a woofer once launched pigment onto a gallery wall, avase is left shattered after an install mishap—soon, these pieces will all be swept away, organizedand returned to their respective plastic bins and cardboard boxes. Park’s work has often dwelledin the ephemeral and given in to chance and circumstance—her acts of worldbuilding assimilatethat which she cannot control while also exacting meticulous care on the elements that she can.Parts from previous installations have been restaged or remade, but they too will becomematerial for the next one. However, little by little, Park has begun to preserve bric-a-brac intablets of clear resin: the dust in the corner of the room, that button that once held us together,stardust, accidents, memories embalmed.

In Loy’s travel guide, immortality mildews in the museums of the moon. Here, Park’s resinworks amber with time. —Calvin Wang

Mimi Park (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist currently residing in New York. Inspired by interwoven patterns around her, which includes the microscopic world, soft circuitry, play therapy and beyond – Park continues her world-building. The sensorial plays a central role in her work, interested in the ways that neuro-atypical forms of communication can often be misconstrued, something that she has experienced firsthand. Mimi has exhibited her work at Lubov, The Hessel Museum of Art, The Swiss Institute, and Smack Mellon.