The time of the composition is the time of the composition. It has been at times a present thing it has been at times a past thing it has been at times a future thing it has been at times an endeavor at parts or all of these things. In my beginning it was a continuous present a beginning again and again and again and again, it was a series it was a list it was a similarity, and everything different it was a distribution and equilibration. That is all of the time some of the time of the composition.

Gertrude Stein

I tend to make lists, not sentences. The words are references, not explanations. Lists are the best way for me to explain how I think about a group of objects or a collection of materials. Collections and materials are physical lists. ​A list can be an intensely condensed expression: an array of disparate elements joined together, packed, concentrated. It is a place where strange relationships can be investigated. A single item can break the flow and create a stutter. Similar items can create repetition, both underscore and complicate. ​Without sentence structure, the list is an abbreviation, ideas are compressed and forced together. They are connected but disconnected, similar but dissimilar. The items can seem completely unrelated, but become linked through their inclusion in the list or collection (sometimes by a title). There are no transitions; the joints remain flexible. A lack of transitions creates a space between items, a place to combine distinct items. There is intermingling; byproducts and tangents are created. There is banter in a list, a back and forth, read down the list, pause, refer back to the title or other items. Words act as suitcases, and packaged baggage. Lists are not formulas, the text is not linear. They are montages, piles, and stacks. ​The combination of things is often undepictable: it is not a sum, but an outcome. While the work is not about language, lists are possible parallel situations to the presence of a collection of things. And even one item, a small suggestion, can begin to contaminate the list.

—Christina Tenaglia

Christina Tenaglia holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. She has been the recipient of an NJ State Arts Council Fellowship Award for Sculpture and has received fellowships for residencies at The MacDowell Colony, I-Park, and Catwalk. She was awarded the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts in 2011 and was a recipient of a purchase award grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition in 2018. She has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions in New York and elsewhere. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Vassar College, living and working in Saugerties, NY.