This work started over ten years ago, when, in one of the climactic shots of Ron Fricke’s filmic oddysey ‘Baraka’, the camera dollies forward to show a closeup of a gilded skeleton in the monument of Pope Alexander VII (Bernini, 1678, when the artist was 80), his (or her?) face obscured by a swath of fabric, holding an hourglass aloft.
There is of course an admonition in this, even if one doesn’t share in the soothing (?) notion of an apocalypse, one’s own world, oneself, will end. And the time and date of our departure is veiled from us. You and I, as we know ourselves, will end.
Earlier Version:
This work was relatively simple, with few revisions, in the end the angel of death figure assumed a more turbulent character, and almost seems to be wearing some kind of helmet or cybernetic armour. Like some being shifting in and out of phase, vaprous wraith and shadow one moment, unstoppable juggernaut the next.
I suppose in a sense then, this work extends from ideas of the Grim Reaper. (Really great article, and a brief look at the way in which ‘death’ has been characterized.) I also feel there was some kind of my thinking coalescing the idea of sports as metahor of some kind of redemption. I don’t normally watch football, but Santonio Holme’s last minute catch in the 2009 Superbowl, coalesced in my mind with the line from De La Soul’s “Long Island Degrees”; we in the last quarter y’all, somebody’s gonna cry‘. And I suppose, I see death as some of both, a great victory, some passage to peace, and a great sorrow for those still here.
P
