Patrick Totally: Dungeon

Art, poster, and documentation by Patrick Totally. Curation by Patrick Totally and Pedro P.P.
June 8th, 2023

"God has to point down to show you the way to Hell, but any way the Devil points is gonna be correct. Got the grime all over me, moss in my gut from all that beer I've been drinking, got grass for eyebrows."
Patrick Totally, artist

The idea of spaces made by the contents within as opposed to their physicality is something I've been interested in since the very conception of the Door gallery, which is why the concept and practical execution behind this show intrigued and excited me deeply; it played with my personal affinity for itinerant spaces, the connections between time and space, as carried by specific elements. The cold before the rain, the rainbows during it, the smell after.




Patrick Totally has dedicated a large part of his carreer to playing with the intrinsic decay of not only the media he works with (unprimed canvases on the early stages of his carreer, consumer-level non-archival paint) but also of art as a whole, in this case letting the nature of an abandoned space play into the show itself, allowing time and its passage to play a key role in the way his art will naturally evolve. An organic, living, breathing organism that transforms over time, the beauty of its eventual demise; an ode to life and death. This show feels intrinsically transitional as well, not only in the way time will affect the pieces and the space surrounding them, but also in a personal sense, with the artist leaving New Jersey shortly after the opening of this show. Time transforms not only space, but life as a whole. A cathartic experience, letting things go in order to make room for the new. Evolution, growth.
Pedro P.P, co-curator

Patrick Totally's website

Steven Girdner's interview with Patrick Totally