Arts, culture, ideas & expression of a few wild art monkeys living in an arts loft in Jersey City.


Monday, August 15, 2011

Helping myself understand what I'm saying..by understanding my obsession




I've been working at describing a particular theme that has consumed my attention for over 14 yrs now. The last 8 years have been my attempts at describing these thoughts visually and is ultimately what coerced me away from my chosen field in Industrial Design and into visual art. It began with some casual conversation on the nature of reality and it's "pulse" that seemed prevalent in all of life's functions. How the universal laws that govern our reality tend to have a Contracting & Expanding force driving them. It was those early philosophical conversations that would eventually inspire all my work. Our Universe, our breathing, child birth, weather patterns, digestion, you name it there is a contracting/expanding force involved, the "pulse" of our world is inherent in all aspects of our lives from micro to macrocosm and I couldn't not see it.

Everywhere I looked I saw things as C/E. I see it as a metaphor and a reality. It's in our patterns of speech; vowels and consonants as well as in our mathematics and engineering. I filled books and books on the subject as my obsession grew. I watched movies and looked for symbolism and sure enough whenever an epic tale was being told there was proof the author was aware of this fundamental law that I felt was greatly overlooked and understated. It can also be understood as Attraction/Reflection in a simpler state but nonetheless it seems C/E is something that we naturally take for granted and hardly consider applying to the formula when we are trying to better understand how the world works. -Perhaps it is my illusion that it is so important.. but in any case, when I began painting , naturally it was my 1st muse.

I didn't know that is what I was painting right away, but by the 3rd or 4th painting I discovered I was still obsessing over C/E and began fine tuning the process. It wasn't just C/E that I was now focused on, it was how each interaction between energies has a root energy and what that energy may look like in it's primordial state. Perhaps it resembles the objects of outer space, deep in the ocean or like biology under a microscope? The old philosophical question of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well I suppose if sound waves are not received then how can it be measured/translated as an actual sound? So that was my jump off point...What does the untranslated energy of an idea/event look like at its most primitive before its been reconfigured into a perceiver's mind?

The work has changed a bunch since those initial inspired days of smearing and scratching at paint on a back lit surface. I've taken to fabricating my own lightboxes, including doors made from recovered woods and parts, the addition of vaccuformed plastics to make 3d shapes, numerous dissolvent techniques, combining it into furniture and installing the work in semi-permanent environments like The Gallery Lounge where the work is LED lit. With every evolution I feel closer to explaining what it is I feel to be true, whether I'm right or not, that is:

"This world is not necessarily an illusion, but can be understood as a fractional reality built and limited by all beings senses. The sincere description of reality would either begotten by the impossible comprehension of all the sensations and translations that have ever existed in the minds of every organism across millenia, OR by the comprehension of the latent general laws that have yielded the circumstantial happenings of our reality- That is to say, that those whom claim any knowledge on the subject of God or Science owe it to themselves to explore the general nature of things before speaking on behalf of the greater nature of things."

By understanding my obsession with my first Muse I hope to move forward cautiously and peacefully because at times a Muse is a monster or a God and other times a God is a Muse and a Monster. Stay tuned for my Solo show at LITM with this title in Mind. GOD MUSE or MONSTER opening October 4th.
-Fathom

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