Incarnation: The Languages of Belief, Proof and Contradiction

INCARNATION SHOW 12/06 - 02/07

2006-12-20T15:28:00.001-06:00

Looking at art can be like looking at television static and hoping to find the patterns…or it can be a potent medium that bypasses the mundane and gives us a glimpse of the transcendent, the mystical, the unspoken. It has the power to tell stories, connect us with feelings and memory, inspire us to wrestle with assumptions- revealing things that may not be easily seen otherwise.

The work displayed here comes from a growing community of artists who are a part of another community called the Vineyard Community Church. We wanted to find ways to talk about issues that impact us as artists that are also informed by our spirituality. Our hope is to peel back the surface and look into the mystery, the beauty of the story at the heart of the Christmas season. To go beneath the stereotypes, the Santa Claus outfits, the traditions, the mangers and Nativity scenes to look in to the very core…the idea of Incarnation.

The idea for this show comes from looking at the story of Christmas. It is such a thick soup of customs, tradition, stories and cultural currents. Very little remains of the origin- especially of the potent mystic quality in the notion of that story’s theme…the infinite becoming finite, that which exists outside of time entering a specific moment and location, that which is beyond measure incarnating into an inherently limited form. How similar this is to the same creative process it takes to paint paintings, craft words into poetry and assemble images into film.

Ideas churn inside the recesses of each of us until they manifest…are expressed in some concrete way as conversations, paintings, photographs, films and poems. These creations are a part of us, yet separate. They are representations of a process that is unseen and yet are also the real thing themselves.

Feel free to post any comments here as we would love to dialogue about this work.

Participating Artists:

Alyssa Beebe

Seth Deihl

Jordan Gadapee

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss

Ali Kirsch

Alicia Kock

Jason McCoy

Zakary Neumann

Scott Pardue

Luke Wassink

4 short films

2006-12-20T14:05:00.000-06:00

films by Seth Diehl
2006

(!)

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Eyes Open

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Life...

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They called it a playground!

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MECHOTYPE PLANTS

2006-12-07T14:23:00.000-06:00

Jordan Gadapee
graphic design and ink drawing
2006

Mechotype Plant 01

Mechotype Plant 02

Mechotype Plant 05

Jordan Gadapee
graphic design and ink drawing
2006

STICK SERIES

2006-12-05T21:33:00.000-06:00

Luke Wassink
10"x10"
digital media, drawing and photographs
2006english

spanish

HTML

HTML photograph

binary

render

drawing

photograph

stick from nature

My work is designed to explore the nature of representation and it's inherent contradictions. I do this by creating several different representations of a simple object, and placing them in close proximity to the object itself (a stick) allowing the observer to easily contrast the two.

This reveals the innate limitations of representation. A representation of a physical object such as a stick is, at its core, an attempt to capture something useful about an object of infinite and perfect detail using a finite amount of information. The stick is exactly and perfectly itself down to every detail. It would require an infinite amount of description to perfectly capture it. Thus, on the surface, any attempt to represent the stick is seemingly contradictory since no matter how detailed the representation it could never capture even a tiny fraction of the actual stick.

This dilemma is remedied by our previous experience with sticks, and with things in general. Because we have seen many other things our associations and previous knowledge allow the representations in context to take on truly meaningful, infinite and definite significance.

It is not, however, until one has viewed the stick itself that the true importance of its representations can be understood. Even though the stick in itself contains all possible representations of itself, in a fundamental contradiction, many of the representations are, in fact, not present in the stick until you have seen them. The representations can not be truly appreciated till one experiences the stick itself, but that experience does not take on it's full meaning until it is over as its representations, through interpretation and memory, serve to do the impossible—add new meaning to an object which is inherently and perfectly complete.

Luke Wassink
10"x10"
digital media and photographs
2006

CONSUMER SERIES

2006-12-05T21:22:00.000-06:00

Jason McCoy
10"x10"
mixed media on paper
2006

"Another Side to Free"

"Too Much of a Good Thing"

"Congratulations! You Are Smart...Happy...Good"

"Americans Spend Over One Million Dollars on Stereotypes"

"The Future of the Truth"

"This Summer's Must Have Feeling"

"See the World Through Your Shopping Spree"

"It Could Be Bipolar Disorder"

This series focuses on the contradictions that surround Christmas: the western holiday season compared to the values within the eastern story of Christmas.

One aspect I wanted to explore is the trade-offs we make to maintain and justify our Consumerism. What amount of reality can be sacrificed to maintain the image that my kind and amount of consumption is normal? How much autonomy can be spared to comply with the slogans of advertisements? I also enjoy the way the text, though often preposterous and exaggerated, conveys a sense of authority simply because it was mass-produced.

Inherent within the work is the contradiction of perception and perspective. For example, it is easy to laugh at the stereotypical imagery contained within these works—the mom and pop from the 50s, the coffee drinker, the pipe smoking dad—with a smug sense of having “evolved” beyond such naiveté. And yet, the very thought itself casts me into my own dated understanding; I find myself scrutinized by future generations, and as a viewer I become an anachronism myself! It also comments on the danger of our warped self-perceptions: believing we are free when about to be consumed, that we exercise individual choice while subject to the larger culture, that we are somehow separate from what we consume ourselves.

Jason McCoy
10"x10"
mixed media on paper
2006

ARE YOU REALLY HAPPY?

2006-12-05T21:18:00.000-06:00

film by Jason McCoy
2006
(click on image to play)

SHINING IN DARKNESS

2006-12-05T21:06:00.000-06:00

film by Jason McCoy
2006
(click on image to play)

STUDIES IN PERSONIFICATION 1

2006-12-05T20:54:00.000-06:00

Ali Kirsch -
10"x10"
monotypes with collage
(printmaking, screen, found text, thread, pins)
2006

Recently in my work I have been exploring different aspects of the human experience. There are two levels of my exploration, the first being that of a physical nature and the second being our mental and emotional condition.

I have been using monotype printing techniques juxtaposed with collage to explore this idea. All of this work was at one point part of a larger composition, from which I extracted components to create this series of smaller works.

I find the human experience both the conscious and the unconscious intriguing. How is it that our heart functions like a machine, never tiring, and always on cue? Why is it that we were created to breathe but sometimes our conscious state of being seems to suffocate us? We live with our own realities; I wanted to represent this in fragments. These are Maya Angelou’s words which I cut and reassembled to make the voice my own. I used her poems because she has a strong sense of identity, human struggle and triumph.

Ali Kirsch -
10"x10"
monotypes with collage
(printmaking, screen, found text, thread, pins)
2006

AN ABBREVIATED DICTIONARY OF THE IRRATIONAL

2006-12-05T20:50:00.000-06:00

PARA

Told sideways (for the curious).

Like scattering stones just beyond the threshold of possibility,

where they seem to arrange themselves in rows.

Where they begin to hum.

In the thick moment, in this vibrating tension

between lines stretched taut.

APORIA

How we wait.

The scene: grainy. Molecular.

We’re shifting loose, glinting sand,

urged by the thought of a path that reappears between our movements.

A silent and rapid pulse flutters in our temples.

Our words, tinny and shimmering, take shape in the air,

then dissipate like waves of heat on a bright day.

Com…. Res…. Grav….

Now mouths move as in old film.

Now earth and eye curl, slowly, arch, slowly.

The site: holographic. Retinal.

And we, shifting loose, glinting sand:

atmospheric.

Unable.

LOGOS INCARNATE

Quietly rendered atomic.

LALIA

Let curling tongues lap like cats,

let caves whisper the desert springs,

let drunkards drink near the hedge that speaks

and feast on honey wholly.

Let there be many mouths

in search of one word

no ear has heard

what the rain said, what the stones hummed

in their mother tongue, mother tongue.

But the child knows that all creatures cry

out, outward, for the voice that burns.

OMNI

This

shocks the spirit from the letter and threatens

to leave me loose-lipped and mystical.

Line by line coils to swallow its own tail,

or whirls into pieces trying to move every direction at once.

Language beside itself (paradox), language outside itself (ecstasy!).

An invitation to what is already present, a confession to one who already knows, world without secrets, moving so fast it’s still, amen.

How is it possible, this generous indiscriminacy?

To make hunger nomadic, yet hospitable.

Everywhere, for the choosing.

Yes, this is why prayer happens through the eyes, in silence.

Why we must extend ourselves.

AN ABBREVIATED DICTIONARY OF THE IRRATIONAL

irrational: (adj.) 1. Contrary to or not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical; absurd.

2. Of a number, quantity, or magnitude incommensurable with ordinary quantities, whose value cannot be exactly expressed in finite terms of the unit.

Each poetic entry in this brief collection explores a concept that raises questions about or even challenges reason, order, or possibility. Is language too finite to deal with such concepts, and/or can it enact them, outline their contours, grapple with their perplexities, somehow making them alive and sensible? My hope is that these poems don’t try to pin down para, aporia, logos incarnate, lalia, and omni, but instead act as entryways that open to the possibility of an imaginative, generous, and generative logic—one that can hold apparently contradictory concepts in tension and can offer alternatives to the binaries that bind our thinking.

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss

written during November 2006
for VCCIC art show at House of Aromas; show titled “Incarnation: The Languages of Belief, Proof, and Contradiction”; December 8, 2006

UNTITLED

2006-12-05T20:45:00.000-06:00

Alicia Koch
10"x10"
photography and digital manipulation
2006

untitled

Alicia Koch
10"x10"
photography and digital manipulation
2006

PEARL OF THE PACIFIC

2006-12-05T20:41:00.000-06:00

Scott Pardue
10" x 10"
oil on canvas
2006

Pearl of the Pacific

This piece is an exploration of
contradiction by bordering an image of a little girl
living in poverty in Mazatlan Mexico with online ads
appealing to American tourists.

Scott Pardue
10" x 10"
oil on canvas
2006

AWARE

2006-12-05T20:29:00.000-06:00

Alyssa Beebe
10"x10"
collage and drawing
2006

untitled

Alyssa Beebe
10"x10"
collage and drawing
2006