Homage to snow: Mechanism of a decent reaction
2019
black aluminum foil, was medium, dry pigment
120’’ x 72’’ x 8’’ inches
In Sensitive Chaos, philosopher Thomas Schwenke explores the potential that dwells in water. It burrows in a rhythmic course into its surroundings and is subject to the effects of time which gradually alters the structural forms of its meanders - water thus contains memory. It has streamed through our bodies as embryos; humanity has thus been shaped by water since time immemorial.
I am interested in notions of the universal and fundamental in relation to myths of creation and how the act of drawing reveals ontology, the essence of being. I believe in the cyclical foundation of nature; of water falling on the earth, flowing through organisms and evaporating back into clouds. I am inventing the primacy of animation through water; I imagined my existence as a snowflake falling and shaping the peaks and valleys of a landscape. This bas-relief painting is created by drawing forces within my water-body to distort aluminum foil and fashion wrinkles, folds, mounds, and sinuous passageways. I sprinkled pigments and wax onto the peaks and valleys as relics of my narrative, of my passage. With this work I explore the act of drawing while meditating on the cycle of existence. I invite the viewer to contemplate on the nature of existence and what lies beyond and before as already dormant within.