MICHELE OGILVIE
2001 — 2004 • ICONOGRAPHY OF PRINCIPLE DESIRE
In the span of a lifetime, or one hundred-plus years, the course of Nature has been disrupted and fragmented by two World Wars; two Russian revolutions; a Spanish Civil War; The Great Depression; Oppenheimer's bomb; Einstein's theory of relativity; the splitting of the atom; Freud's psychoanalysis; Sartre's Existentialism; the Wright Brother's invention of flight; Henry Ford's automobile; TV and a walk on the moon. (infoplease.com/1900-2000 world history time line)
Add to that, the new millennium's exponential rate of ‘progress’ and experimentation with genetic engineering, cloning, plague epidemics, global warming, threats of terrorism, and the potential for yet another world war. Is it any wonder that the Spirit of humankind is spinning haphazardly off its track? The Existential dialogue continues.
In the rush and forced optimism of each conscious moment I am searching for evidence of God. To be clear, I am not referring to a religious or patriarchal symbol that has caused millions of people to die or suffer under the name of the cross. I am referring to the ‘God’ that Nietzsche exclaimed died at the hand of a reckless world that wallowed in self-inflicted economic, political and social disparity. In other words, what I seek to understand is Divine Intelligence. I'm talking about an idealistic longing for balance, equanimity and peace.
Carl Jung asserts that the idea of the ‘death of God’ and its immediate consequences —the metaphysical void, is surely a psychic fact of our time. (Jung: Man and his Symbols p. 295.) In response, I recite like a last survivor, from a whimsical prose that says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the proving of things not seen.” (Book of Hebrew, 11:1). I realize this is the reason I submit to making art. Simply said, I want to put a band-aid on the whole damn thing, affect the pace—slow it down. Confront Existentialism. Pray for peace.
Material and process engage to reveal the tactile, visceral and healing qualities of matter. The action is heart-to-hand and then hand-to-matter. Hegel states, “There is a symmetry between the mind of the artist and the Absolute or what one considers to be the essence or meaning of the world. He asserts that art does not only reveal God it is one of the ways in which God reveals [itself.]” (Hegel’s Lectures, p. xiv)
The body of work titled The Iconography of Desire aspires to embark on a phenomenological journey of reinstating Divine Intelligence as the driving quantum life force that exists in all matter, consciousness and mind. It attempts also, to connect to the original premise of Aesthetic philosophy—that is— seeking Truth in nature and in art. From the vantage point of the new millennium's global uncertainty, I serve up the painting, and the art object as a meditation on the ideology of desire and search for meaning. The creative devices used to arouse this journey are metaphor; narrative; language; the vibration of color; the interaction of form, surface, and texture; the collective unconscious; prana/energy; and prayer. —mo, 2004
ICONOGRAPHY OF PRINCIPLE DESIRE • 2001 — 2004
Saggar fired Kyanite clay with fabricated objects • approx. 21 x 14 x 7"
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