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 while I was never able to find a rational explanation for the events of 2002, I received confirmation in 2021 of the fate my paintings could have met if the man who received and kept them had had played along with the game. Meaning that 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 at the best of my knowledge to date.

This epiphany of sorts came during the recasting of my website in 2021. I had then decided to develop and document more the different chapters of my site, willing to redesign it entirely. To do this, I immersed myself in a large part of the documentation I had kept over the years. Among this wealth of information was a book entitled named “Imagining Ground Zero”, published in 2004 by Suzanne Stephens with Ian Luna and Ron Broadhurst.

I had never heard of this book until 2016, when a friend 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, as well as the anecdotes related to them, particularly the twists and turns of Daniel Libeskind's project, official winner of the LMDC's 2002contest.
But being completely absorbed in 2017 by my very busy artistic activity at the time, focused on themes unrelated to the World Trade Center, I had not found the time to delve further into that book. Naturally, In 2021 I did, 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 had confirmation that this approach, if he had initiated it, was not doomed to failure from the start. Because the context at the time was objectively favorable: real opportunities did indeed exist in 2002 in New York for initiatives like mine.

Indeed, I realized that nine months before December 2002 (the date I arrived in New York with my paintings under my arm to propose to James Hanlon that we try to publicize their message to the residents of the Big Apple), the gallerist Max Protetch had presented a major exhibition open to the public at his Chelsea gallery: an event named “A New World Trade Center”.  This exhibition 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.
All of those spontaneous projects which all presented their own visions for Ground Zero’s future. Thus, the context of the end of 2002 made Max Protetch an ideal potential interlocutor, whom James Hanlon could easily approach, because of the status newly conferred on him by his multi-award-winning documentary 9/11. From then on, one can reasonably imagine that the gallery owner could at least have agreed to take a look at my paintings. Not necessarily in his capacity as an art professional, because I do not claim that my pictorial work could necessarily have interested him. But simply his involvement in the event that he himself had organized nine months earlier could have possibly encouraged Max Protetch to participate in the dissemination of the concept presented by my paintings.

In hindsight, and given the impact of the 2002 exhibition "A New World Trade Center", is it conceivable that a New Yorker like James Hanlon, who had participated in an internationally award-winning documentary on the September 11 attacks, could never have heard of an exhibition in New York on the same theme in 2002, nor of its promoter?