Hochet punching bags hang from the ceiling, topped with delicate brass structures from which bronze bells are suspended. Activated by the public’s blows, the bells ring out, recalling the sound that marks the pauses between rounds in a boxing match. If the punching bag evokes training, whether military or martial, here it becomes a percussive instrument. Most are teardrop bags, shaped like drops of sweat or tears. The work shifts an object of violence into a more ambiguous mode of interaction. If the bell usually signals the end of a round, or even the end of a fight, then in Hochet, each strike becomes a signal to stop.

The piece restages the impossibility of violence, every attempt to hit immediately calls for its own suspension. Reading Wrong are small, wall-mounted pieces in patinated bronze. Shaped from flat metal bars, each ends with a musical rest, the symbol for a silence equal to a quarter note. Mounted directly on the wall, these works trace a form of silent writing.

They flow like tears, or like the arc of a fall ending in a final breath. The exhibition may be read as a sequence of gestures, a melody of impacts, a knockout rhythm. It echoes Lucas Erin’s memories of boxing and music. But the title Reading Wrong suggests an uncertain, shifted reading, where error becomes a way of seeing differently. 

Thomas Liu Lelan