WTC > paintings

Since 2002, I have never been able to find an explanation that could make sense for what happened at the time in New York. Does Gédéon Naudet’s 2019 statement help clarify things? In view of the story and facts that preceed, everyone is free to make one’s own opinion -as I have made mine.

A 2021 Epiphany

But if I never could find a rational explanation for what had happened to my paintings since 2002, I had in 2021 a revelation of what could have happened to them, if their New York recipient had played fair, meaning if he had called me, if we had met and as a result if he had done what he should have done then -Insofar as he accepted and kept my paintings at that time, which he did to the best of my knowledge, to date.

This epiphany occurred when I recast my web site in 2021.
I had then decided to develop and document more the different chapters of my site, willing to redesign it entirely. For that task, I dived into a lot of documentation that I had kept since years. Among this lot, figured a book named “Imagining Ground Zero”, published in 2004 by Suzanne Stephens with Ian Luna and Ron Broadhurst.

I had not been aware of that bound edition until 2016, when a friend had offered it to me. I had then perused through that book, interested to discover the many facets and anecdotes specific to the official proposals that the LMDC had selected in 2001 and 2002, notably what had happened afterwards to Daniel Libeskind's project, LMDC's 2002 contest's official winner.

But being myself completely absorbed by my artistic activities on other matters in 2017 (which at that time were many, and quite dense), I had not found the time to delve further into that book. Naturally, I did in 2021, when I started to remodel and rewrite the WTC chapter for my new web site.

In 2021, I found out that what I had requested James Hanlon to do with my paintings was not impossible at all to achieve, and was not farfetched at all either. I discovered that my approach had neither been isolated, nor completely absurd -and certainly not doomed from the start to fail. Because real opportunities did factually exist, by then.

I discovered that more or less nine months before that I came myself to New York to bring my paintings to James Hanlon in order to publicize their existence and the message they proposed, the Art Dealer Max Protetch and his gallery in Chelsea had organized a vast exhibition for the public in New York, named “A New World Trade Center”.  

An exhibition which drew a lot of attention and was furtherly followed by the publishing of a book in 2002 as well : “A New World Trade Center Design Proposals”, as a recap of the whole series of projects that the exhibition had presented.

That exhibition displayed a whole series of spontaneous projects which all presented their own visions for Ground Zero’s future. Meaning that at the end of 2002, Max Protetch was ideally the kind of person whom James Hanlon could have easily contacted. It is not inconceivable to think that the gallerist could have accepted to at least see my work, because his implication in the event that he had organized nine months before proved his genuine interest in the subject.

I am certainly not claiming that Max Protetch would have necessarily been interested by the paintings themselves, in terms of art and style. I am just saying that he could have been interested by their concept.

Can one really find credible that James Hanlon, at the end of 2002 when he received my paintings, had never heard at any time of such a manifestation, which had taken place eleven months before, in February of the same year?