Yesterday, fortuitously, I happened upon the opening of Somewhere Else, the latest show curated by Krista Saunders and Jill Benson of  G-Train Salon at Urban Alchemist, a Fifth Avenue shop that sells artisan  jewelry, clothing and objects d’art.

Fanny Allié, a young French artist who now makes her home in Brooklyn, was assembling clay alphabet letters into a sentence for display in the front window of the store. She has created five sentences that tell a very short story, which will appear during the course of this, the latest G-Train Salon exhibition.

I was intrigued.

As pictured above, the letter are clustered in an interesting looking pile that could be the artwork itself. That the artist arranges them into an ambiguous narrative is even more compelling.

Allié told me that she likes to use language in her work though she is not a writer.  “I write for myself, notes, journals. I like words and I think in English now,” the native-French speaker told me. In her artist statement she writes: “I explore the notion of trace 
that indicates the existence of others and my own. 

Trace also shows the passing of time. Many of my projects suggest the course
 of time as they examine memories, past actions or incidents, and events that 
happened at a specific and recorded time.”

Although the artist doesn’t live in Park Slope she pointed at that she used Park Slope locations in the story (Fifth Avenue. Ginger’s Bar. Stone Park Cafe): “I want people who walk by to connect to the story,” she told me.

The story now on display in the window of Urban Alchemist begins: “The stranger was walking on Fifth Avenue in my direction when he got close enough he started talking to me.” Stop by the Park Slope shop to see what happens next.

The G-train salon made its debut in a living room on Flatbush Avenue and it is committed to showing the work of emerging artists from Brooklyn and Queens (hence the name G-train) in intimate and unusual settings. A discussion with the artist is an important part of the concept and adds immeasurably to the experience, the curator told me.