1982 Mythologies of Origin, Purity and Sublimation cycle

Work is a reflection on GREEK myth, populated by half-human, half beast creatures. Sir Alister Hardy postulated that humans may have desended from ocean-dwelling creatures. From the instant of geneis a temporal vessel- the human body in the long slow procession of time.

Jung believed that for every condition in human life there existed an archetype. Four elements forming human personality and behavior: the persona, the female anima for its male counter foil, the animus) the shadow, the self. The stand in mutual opposition yet unite together as a whole. Inate features fusing in integrated balance.

I attempt to defined visual presence with the conceptual mechanism that trigger the work. I then use iconic forms to suggest oblique narratives that are based on absence or the suggestion of a memorial. A preordained arrangement evolves into homage to the grid in a compendium of techniques self imposed inviobility like an extended dream. I am governed by nonsequiturs. A repressed content, disires and tension to make the viewer see for the first time through the walls of conformity. Repression blocks the depth and breath of our unconscious lives. I feel that there is a stifling social conditioning that limits us until we are too old or weak to act.

I start by showing the inner world of the protagonist,into his or her memory. The impossible and the contradictory fit together in a baffling unity. I insert found or severed materials as transformation and mutation of both. Referencing The Golden Bow James G. Fraser documented studies became a stepping-stone. I used floor constructions in which independent elements depend on one & other for stability. Sea salt was a symbol of man’s connection to the Earth. The works spill over the border between the visual medium and the realm of tribal. I started with a mini cathedral with nave and transept. Silent sanctuaries open to the sky. as Minimalism roots in the living world.

168. THE MOMENT AND ITS IMMEDIACIES

Antlers recall the wilds and the routines of taxidermy that turn trophies of the hunt into wall decorations. In empiricist themes reality is always more situational. Ideation can obscure our relationship to reality.

165. THE SALT SELLER (Eyes Adrift as Sardines Wrench at Your Heart Strings)

A talismanic presence, based on Giovanni Della Porta, a 16th-century Neapolitan nobleman, believed to have invented the camera lens.

He believed our means of organizing knowledge determine the extent to which we see. I used the lens in my work as symbolic of the gravitational lens caused by gravity and atmosphere. I felt the need to create a homunculus camera on spidery legs. Bearing a lens, he exploits his power to control evidence, an instrument of witness. The camera obscura, as a figure of visual mastery and Cartesian subjectivity, is eclipsed by embodied theories of the optical in the first part of the 19th century.

The half-mechanical, half-organic appearance reflects the primitive anxiety-ridden overtures I personally felt. I used a coconut hinges open, filled with Dead Sea salt at the heart. In ancient times, the coconut was considered magical, with powers to detect poison and was a main part of the early challis. The work mimics Etruscan tomb sculpture, fossil as well as symbolic adversary, a sort of Pandora’s box. Spider-like metal legs wrapped in candlewick come out of ornate wood extensions. The spine, a toy piano’s sounding bars, second as heart strings. The outer shell made of sticks from the Black Forest, while hanging from its pack, a lasso of candlewick, (ersatz Isa Genzken). Obfuscated figures yield how one form covertly translates into the next. A homunculus, sitting on the belly of a sleeping woman looks mockingly at the viewer saying, “ You and I are the ridiculed subject of her nightmare ”. In the story told by Apuleius, Psyche never sees Cupid. He visits her nightly after dark and departs through the window by dawn’s earliest light. Psyche’s jealous sisters assure her that he is a monster, moving her eventually to spy on him by candlelight, but that catastrophic event seems here reserved for some future morning. Cupid has been instructed by his mother, Venus to inflame Psyche with passion for “some utterly worthless man” but then falls in love with her himself.

166. A LOT WHISPERS

A staple of Surrealism, the theme of woman as statue. I used archaic Grecian fluted columns, (and more abstract and subversive of figurative references) Verticality suggests the totem, hence the figure. I created complex decorative rhythms with zigzags and staccato patterning. Evolution and change were the main issues, based on the story of Lot, who is told of the demise of Sodom. He warns his family leave and not to look back, but his wife, hearing, turns to look and is turned to a pillar of salt. (The paint is coated with green dye and salt crystals) Specificity of these objects is what allows the impenetrable narrative. The eye and ear are physical objects, with no consciousness revealed behind, while on her head she wears a sieve with a zigzag pattern that recalls a cardiogram. Concentric rings of two Goodyear wheels are enhanced in a green outer ring of orange, both internal and external volume as sculpture’s idiom.

152. THE DREAMY SPELL OF EVAPORATING TIME

Symbolic interiors are visual metaphors for the self, masking what usually takes place in the bedroom, birth, death, sleep and sex.