Little Deaths 2010

LITTLE DEATHS: the precursor

 Upanishads:

       We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along it.

       We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.

        This is true for the entire universe.

Friedrich Neitzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra):

         One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourself.

Somewhere there between lays my concerns.

Billy, March 2010

LITTLE DEATHS: more particularly

This exhibition strives to encapsulate something of the elusive threshold of longing.

The sensation of longing may be readily felt. Yet to capture it, to say what it is that one is longing about can, except in the most obvious cases, be more difficult to pinpoint.

It may be the intense colour in the petal of a garden flower that transports one to a distant past, at once extraordinarily familiar but utterly non-placeable.

Longing is not merely yearning or desire. It can be for things past, future, or even for things felt of the present; or about identity and acceptance; for loves (of course) or perhaps ‘a nice resolution’ that might come with death. Or for the simplicity of the viewpoint of a child; or for a want to understand the order of things (an explicable categorisation perhaps), or for just some (bloody) development that would provide a moment’s resolution, or even a hiccup in the longing. Or maybe it’s simply an aspect of the human condition – ineffable longing. I sometimes think it may be the ‘nothing’, felt or experienced.

La petit mort is one such ‘hiccup’ – a moment’s understanding, or perhaps a moment understood. A moment when you’ve nailed the longing! And hence my title, for when I capture a longing it is akin to a little death, of sorts….(laughing).

Billy, March 2010

See also The Kiss: Pushing against the limits, by Dr. Sanne Mestrom under Media tab