Organized by Alissa Bennett.

"And if beauty is terror," said Julian, "then what is desire?
We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?"
"To live," said Camilla.
"To live forever," said Bunny, chin cupped in his palm.
The tea kettle began to whistle.

–Donna Tartt, The Secret History

This exhibition is titled after The Secret History—Donna Tartt’s beloved mystery told in reverse—and though I have spent a lot of time thinking about the book and could certainly summarize its plot, I feel it would still be a difficult task to explain to someone who hasn’t read it what it’s actually about. On its surface, the novel tells the story of a group of young classical studies students who accidentally set off a series of disastrous events when their intellectual hubris, social alienation, and misplaced romanticism inspire a ritual invocation of Dionysus. Fixated on a dead language and its obsolete world, Tartt’s protagonists suffer a schizophrenic crisis; while their fantasies ricochet around a technicolor past filled to overflowing with gods and mysteries and the seismic tragedies of Homer, their bodies remain tethered to a Taco Bell present. I suppose in many ways, I think The Secret History is a book that ponders why we so often fail to calculate that the world doesn’t always change in the ways we think it does; it’s not just us who are dissatisfied, people have always looked for ways to escape. I think of Pompeii and the blanket of ash that filled its mystery rooms and covered its outdoor fast-food counters, its laundromats and its gardens. I think of the landscape, now depopulated to zero save for its famous plaster ghosts, those tortured figures caught frozen in shock as they crawl away toward a future that never comes.