International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts Athens, Greece 2014
Thomas Houser
Abstract: This paper examines how the author/artist introspectively explores the Final Judgment within a series of installations, specifically two recent projects, Attrition and Contrition and two under development, Babel Overture [see Babel Amidst an Arising] and Seven. The installations deal more with the inner struggles of laymen than eschatological concerns of the clergy, although these perspectives converge.
The series sprang from a lighthearted trip to scavenge pieces of colorful glass from the Murano Glass landfill in Venice. Almost immediately re-emerging slag became a metaphor for re-awakening bones − imperfect souls with unsure afterlives. Things were not as they seemed. Bright and beautiful objects were fronting false hopes.
The Prelude to Judgment installations symbolically addresses the after-life through temporal concerns of recycling, sustaining and protecting the environment. However, the significance of religious tradition in these projects is undeniable. As a sign of the covenant between God and man in Judeo-Christian traditions the rainbow symbolizes hope. It does so in these installations, but with faded, withdrawn warnings of loss and despair.
Like rising souls, recycled bottles are pulled upwards by symbolic birds or angels in Attrition and hoisted aloft by abstract calipers in Contrition, thus referencing the measuring of souls, inevitable by-products of Judgment. Embossed images on larger calipers depict autobiographical losses: ex-votos representing hope while rising upwards.
The balance between temporal concerns and Eternal Order appears throughout. The rising helixes in Attrition are punctuated with the Fibonacci numbering sequence. As the forms rise the sequence grows and more perfectly approaches the Golden Mean. The Particular Judgment of the moment moves towards the Final Judgment with more perfect resolution. Similarly in Contrition two shafts proportioned to the Golden Mean serve as conduits for forms escaping Purgatory. Positive and inverse images from the Murano landfill and temples of Zeus, Apollo and Poseidon suggest what is seen may be unreal.
Keywords: Installation art, digital imaging, CAD and fabrication __________ Judgment Revealed: Tendering Hope Amid Shrouded Despair. ATINER Conference on Visual and Performing Arts Proceedings. (http://www.atiner.gr/abstracts/2014ABST-ART.pdf) p. 52.
