Memories are our own secrets, our conscious versus our subconscious, to hide from or to ward-off threat, fear and failure. Do we know the difference between 'masks and gargoyles'? Or do we have memories that we change, augment, belittle, reject or repress? But like Painting, there is no chronological sequence in the way we select, neglect or despise beyond our linear selves? So nature has gifted us privacy and we act in self filtered need to control, or..... do we engage the past, present and future in a random way? It's almost nature's way of guiding us through the surreal of our lives with loops and trajectories and tangents? Surely our DNA is rooted to the terra nostra of our eye, to hand to brush to paint to canvas, a complex interactivity that is non tech agenda, but also not over-simplistic analogue (Painting by numbers). Indeed, any slight alteration of a brush stroke and the Painting is on a knife edge of losing the image the Painter wants and can destroy or make a happy accident that compels unfiltered deviation and brings new clarity or otherwise!! This Surreal nature does not rely on 19th century ideological interference of Marx or Nietzche or Freudian analysis! This tech-free landscape is not deconstructed by yesterday's moral relativism or mere profitability, that I believe was the very 20th century thinking that imploded the Cold War on the Soviet Union that unravelled and led to the unscrupulous 'Wild East' that funds the inevitably anointed Putin to invade Ukraine. Instant raw Capitalism and an untried but closely state manipulated Democracy is hooked on tech Art as much as the West has become a theatrical performance of how determined the Russian people are to express the freedom to march and demonstrate, but its leadership being brazonly imprisoned by trumped-up charges. It's Russia's version of 2 systems, (of course Democracy and Capitalism), for the time being, but the long play is to re-equip, rebuild, invest in new western technology that can be militarised, and export its aggrandizing (even if it is more like Russian 19th century imperialism) power abroad, as counter-westernist! Will Brazil, India, China and South Africa continue to cooperate with Russia still in their alignment to BRICS? Or will they outgrow not just the West, but the East too?
But like all centralized power, like in the Art world, it prefers to express its dominance in terms of technological influence rather than the transparency of non-tech Art (Painting), because visual originality has been annexed by how tech Art can break new grounds in 'experiencing Art' and not emphasise the initiative of the individual to create his/her own work that works on the reflex of the human footprint, the DNA of Art - from the earliest visual human artifact found to be 70,000 ago to the accessible work of Paint (and also financially open to all) applied to a surface today. This makes us join with others rather than relying on a day out to witness incredible Conceptual Art, but not to create ourselves. This unimaginable untapped potential of all not to just engage Christos' wrapping of huge public arenas that are monumental acts of public participation that is rejuvenating, and the like that brings people together, but to put Paint to canvas ourselves on our own, under our own steam. It is that spirit that I'm looking to showcase the idea of both chronological as well as more diverse series of images from the same original that can allow the viewer to make their own sequence or simple order of an alternative connection, handing people the choice in a low level semi-tech-free environment, designed by them and not me!
Visit Masks and Gargoyles.