Carson Foley 
Negative Capability

June 13, 2021 – July 11, 2021

Coined by the Romanticist John Keats, Negative Capability is meant to articulate the pursuit for beauty and the desires of the present without the framework of logic or absolute truth. It’s a willful lack of certainty. But for Carson Foley, the term transcends these fleeting moments and serves as a mantra of self love and preservation. Indulging in uncertainties makes us feel sane, grounded, loved.

Joined together in a sunny pasture, two boys embody this ideology of blissful detachment. Arm in arm, they’re open to the world and its mysteries, its doubts. They also fend for themselves and fight off demons side by side. This stands in absentia of Negative Capability, where suddenly their mythology is lived in the hardened framework of natural selection— everything is at stake. Mindful of creating in the vestiges of a pandemic, Foley contends with where we go to find comfort once connection is lost. The integrity of their intimacy is challenged by the blaring “6 feet,” a precaution of both physical and emotional distance.

Pools have long been central to Foley’s work as water embodies the duality of harmony and chaos. An above ground pool ladder serves this bi-lateral thought pattern of ‘all or nothing’- a mechanism for immersion or seclusion. Yet we find comfort somewhere in the rare middle. Half immersed, we float on our backs. The euphoria of suspension and weightlessness comes with the risk of suffocation and yet, there is peace in the purgatory of it all.

-Wonhee Lee

Carson Foley (b. 1994) grew up in Maine, he lives and works in New York City. He graduated from The Cooper Union in 2018. Negative Capability is Carson Foley’s debut solo show.