Entropy is an
eschatological blessing. Counting on its recurrence (and its cozy, clean cusp)
may sedate an artist into becoming either the unicorn chaser or the uchonian
chastiser the rest of the species ridicules. This is a work about hortus conclusus and the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics.
Appendix
The “Brutalisme lyrique” that I’m rooting & exploiting affords a
synthesis in which the materialism of the architectural act and the idealism of
the acrylic burst spot each other in an existential workout with, alas,
negligible soteriological payoff. At the end of such a sweltering deadlift
routine, one ought to wonder: is there no taming of that “disorderly exist”
which chips away at one’s atoms?
Consequently, in this
painting, I’ve tried to cheat entropy (which is, caeteris paribus, a three people job!).
My first abettor: James Clerk Maxwell, the 19th
century Scottish scientist whose groundbreaking work on electromagnetic
radiation singled out electricity, magnetism and light -
which are, incidentally, three crucial variables in this painting: all you need
to do is transpose your POV, and you will notice a de Chirico phenomenology to it… Maxwell gloriously postulated: “All heat is of the same kind”, and
imagined a theoretical routeway (via his so-called “demon” hypothesis - which
could prove viable in nanoscale systems, similar to the one you are seeing
right now) towards defining temperature without engaging entropy. My conundrum
was if the same could be done with “color monumentalities”: could I express the
rather abnormal heat exchange between the “I” (aka, the painter) and the “We”
(aka, the viewer) without engaging the reality of the dead-end inevitability?
My second confederate: Șerban Țițeica, the 20th
century founder of the Romanian School of Theoretical Physics, thanks to whom I
understood that my problem was one of (thermo)dynamic transitivity, not of equilibrium
stability… Consequently, what I needed to disregard was a geometric impulse
of balance. Moreover, I had to surrender the attempt to control the viewers’
psychosomatic equilibrium...
In Physics, a solution
becomes available once the notion of “diathermal walls” comes into play: we are
using boundaries that allow the transfer of heat, but not of matter.
In Art, the closest we got to these walls is the hortus conclusus. From the “Song
of Songs” to Fra Angelico, from
the Pompeii peristyles to Peter Zumthor’s
2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, from The
Orto Botanico at Padua and the Cistercian
Monastery of Le Thoronet to the works of the elusive Upper Rhenish Master, there is always a locus amoenus to be cloistered with such craftsmanship, that would
allow only the very best part of us (a soul, perhaps…) to find trespassing
& transcendent solace.
No wonder one can find
unicorns, a Mother of God, a Tree of Life, a Fountain of Youth or endless
luminous emanations in such enclosed gardens! No wonder, therefore, that my
painting was instead influenced conceptually by Hieronymus Bosch, and technically by (the later works of) John Hoyland. And then I’ve simply
zoomed in, focusing on discrete vibratos, similar to the ones I recall from my
adolescence, when I was discovering Górecki’s
“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”.
However, there if a catch:
without entropy, there is no solace to be touched. Without entropy, there is
only an incoherent mise en abyme that
no amount of beton-brut may shelter
from narcissistic inertia. So an alternative description of this work could be:
“The tree sought refuge in the leaf, the
house in the door, and the city in the house. The same scene over and over. The
tree became a leaf, the house a door, and the city a house. It was hard to see
all that and not seek refuge in my hands.” (“Fando y Lis”, 1968, Alejandro
Jodorowsky – based on the play by Fernando
Arrabal).
UNIQUE ARTWORK
> format: XL > size: 104 x 72cm / (72 x 52cm) x 2
> medium: acrylic painting, copper metalwork
> support: magnani paper 300gsm
more
on: https://alexandru-crisan.com/
