HUMILITAS
vanitas I humilitas
artwork
Vanitas-Humilitas # 2, objet d'art. Found object, vanity fan frame (painted wood and textile), slate, earth. Dim.: 72 x 41.5 x 6.5 cm. The Pyrenees, 2023.
"Today I found a gilted fan display case in a bric-à-brac shop. From the recesses of my memory: an image of a village house. This object could only be Spanish (French, maybe).
My first thought-image after that was: fill it with earth, or with pollen or pine needles!
The golden frame, the golden age, the society fan...
The empty display box. A spectre of the human - nowhere to be seen. A silence, an absence, a void. Next to the immensity of the earth - the mountain
How gold invites a foregrounding of the humble – think of Fra Angelico
It's the gold that lets the bare be seen - that makes manifest the naked, exposed, fragile
The convention of framing - a containment
Enquire into the relation between matter and the image
To permeate each other
Ever so ancient and ever so contemporary - Cy Twombly
To undo, to let be, to let the deep time of geology speak"
(Notes, 10.06.22)
Work in progress.
Organic matter
Conceptual text (vanity fan encased frame)
Digital image of V / H 1 // Digital image of V / H 2 (process) - slates and open frame
Link to / from The Humility of Slate (research).
[page in progress]
Can the humble be drawn out through imaging?
What is the style of humility, of restraint, of ascesis?
Is there room for intervention in the humble image?
How can I open up the frame?
What elements can be loosened or undone?
Seeing afresh the illegible, the unintelligible, the formless
The events of nature are sudden and fleeting - one must be ready
Actuality, question, synthesis
I need to still - before I can see
To spend time with the world before me, before it forms into an image
For the image to reflect that formative experience back to the viewer
What does the humble leave behind? The question of intention
The act of showing