The works in the exhibition Perhaps the Truth suggest that the truth is not a fixed or absolute concept, but rather something that is shaped by experiences and shifting perceptions. Perhaps the Truth is inspired by the writings of Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) and the late painter and poet Jesse Murry (1948–1993). 

The exhibition title directly comes from a line in Stevens’s long-form poem Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942): “Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around a lake.” The act of walking around the lake, like the process of making and viewing work, leads to various interpretations of truths and helps us make sense of the world and our place within it. Influenced by Stevens’s poetry, Murry also believed in painting as a “supreme fiction”–– through acts of disbelief and imagination can we save ourselves. He writes, “What has prompted this effort toward humanity is a necessary belief in art’s saving powers of address.”

The exhibiting artists’ paintings and sculptures in Perhaps the Truth reveal expansive definitions of truths. Some create dreamscapes that are surreal, hallucinogenic spaces that transcend boundaries. Others look beyond our earthly imaginations to broaden notions of the self. Classifications of human, animal, and spirit are blurred. Gender binaries are dismantled. Biological, organic, and artificial life are merged. The exhibiting artists mine ancestral histories and folklore, to form new mythologies for the future.

Much like Murry’s landscape paintings, in which he created an “inwardness” and “poetic dimension” through “extra-visual content,” many of the artists here use saturated color, rich textures and varied materials, creating visceral experience. The works in the exhibition are imbued with a feeling of freedom and transformative capacities––a world free of fixed identities and singular experiences. Perhaps the Truth is in tribute to the spirit and legacy of both Stevens and Murry, whose works, like the works on view, are in the process of searching for what makes us who we are.

Perhaps the Truth features work by Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Jes Fan, Joel Gaitan, Florian Krewer, Rebecca Manson, Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, Jesse Murry, Robert Nava, Ilana Savdie, Kiki Smith, Astrid Terrazas, Lucía Vidales, and Issy Wood.

Perhaps the Truth is organized by Fairfax Dorn with Daisy Nam with assistance from Alexann Susholtz. Opening Celebrations of Perhaps the Truth, October 6–7, kick-off Ballroom Marfa’s 20th-year anniversary.