Untitled (Large Collage)
The entire piece measures approximately 50” wide by 60” tall. It is the culmination of three years of persistent work and the largest project by scale and scope accomplished to date.
Incorporating many of the same elements and themes found in smaller compositions, here they’re explored across a larger area and given breath for expansion. While investigating every crevice of the environment one is drawn into its vicissitudes and left wondering where one might find oneself; turn a corner and one could end up in another part of the piece having to start over again. This open ended narrative function found in smaller pieces, where one can dive in at any point, has the dual function of providing multiple points of entry while maintaining cohesive scenes. The viewer is able to fixate on a part, discern a narrative to suddenly learn moments later that the perspective, tone and nuance has changed rather quickly.
No matter where one starts, the central element that splits the piece is unavoidable. Emerging from the background and rushing into the forefront, the river weaves and cuts through the center carving up the terrain with the impression and intensity of a flood sweeping through a valley.
From the river’s depths come throngs of skeletons, neither inert remnants or immobile husks, ranging in size, and reaching for whatever they can grasp. This desperation is revealed through a quick comparison among the subtle expressions found in their features, from irregular and emptied eye sockets and void-filled nose holes to their sharpened calcified features, upper mandibles and oblong craniums as they emerge from the iridescent purple depths. Some seem lost, even surprised at where they find themselves, others somewhat contemplative at their current situation; others are reserved, resigned even to their place as if to express where would it get them even if they tried. Most are eager and ambitious, reaching, crawling, clawing and grasping - tripping over themselves as it were - in search of something, for anything nearby to pull them out and give them ground. Yet they’re dually weighed down by their lumbering bodies, the silver-violet streams dripping from them as if keeping tethered to the pool, this tarpit that they’ve emerged from. As skeletons they are the only parts of ourselves leftover after everything has decayed: once helpless to the natural processes, they find themselves trying to drag themselves out of the void determined to cling on. They’re caught in a form of arrested apprehension: acquiesce to what is known or strive for permanence, assurance, recognition, support, connection, security and for ‘self.’
The edge of the river becomes almost subjective, the surroundings are fraught with dangers; something isn’t quite settled.
Following any number of outstretched arms thrusts one into a dynamic landscape, a surreal kaleidoscope of situations populated by haunting entities, agents whose appeal is ambiguous, ethereal, and seemingly dangerous. Interspersed are instances of lurching repose, a tenuous relief that is vigilant to the fact that soon enough it’ll be interrupted and one will be strewn back into the chaos that exists just over the bend, around the hill or beyond the next border. [This speaks to the pervasive friction and dissonance reinforced over and over as if nowhere and everywhere.]
Arguably the other main element dominating the composition are the three groups of four torch bearers. The trails of their flames swirling upwards in dramatic crescendos as they stand arrived atop a bridge where beneath are a series of archways depicting scenes of a foreign landscapes, the domicile of other entities, nascent threats, and sometimes escapes. Each option a veritable gateway as their presence above implies an inherent authority akin to dignitaries bearing a message from another place, whether it’s assistance or oncoming danger is unknown.
Within the piece are the recognizable fiery-eyed entities emerging from the landscape, climbing down from the hills, out of the caverns, menacing and haunting, and attracted to the frenetic energy of the river’s inhabitants. Drawn to the river their motives are hard to discern, are they like predators to a feeding trough or are they approaching to supply assistance? Meanwhile, not all are traversing the terrain, others populate the underworld as if waiting for their moment to pounce, some less realized than others and appearing more like apparitions wanting to be pulled into being (a self-generating perception of danger, insecurity?). It’s a palpable lurking threat behind the scenes yet, with everything else that’s going on,
But glints of hope are scattered throughout the piece. “Winged” figures whose wings are more like shimmers caught in motion, hover in various places as if the last vestige of what came before and about to slip out into another place. Assistance seems vanishing here, even their appearance is tinged with escapism like impotent saviors: hopeful, aspirational, ready to seize the moment and rescue, vanquish or redeem and yet, when one looks closely, they seem rendered frozen in place as if weighed down by the environment. They don’t know necessarily where to ‘go’, their focus is muddled by the inundation of their surroundings and in this way they share an inherent trait with the “figures with floating heads” that tend to dot the smallest and most remote spaces.