Article

When I conceived Christ, I was not interested in making an image, nor in reinterpreting a figure that has already been endlessly represented. My concern was to create an event of consciousness — a condition in which material and perception could meet without the mediation of narrative or doctrine. The work does not depict; it invites. It asks the viewer to suspend recognition, to enter a space where seeing itself becomes the subject. The sculpture consists of twenty-five meters of jute rope, one centimeter in diameter, pigmented with iron oxide and enclosed within a transparent glass vitrine. Every aspect of this construction is deliberate. Jute, an industrial fiber, is both coarse and organic; it carries the memory of labor, of hands, of the earth. Iron oxide, in its deep red tone, evokes rust, soil, and blood — the substances through which time and transformation announce themselves. The glass, in contrast, introduces an atmosphere of distance and precision. It isolates the object while exposing it fully to light. Together, these materials form a dialogue between touch and transparency, weight and air, immediacy and reflection. Materiality is my point of departure. I am drawn to substances that resist monumentality, that refuse preciousness. In Christ, the rope’s coiled form establishes a rhythm between containment and expansion, between the finite and the infinite. It suggests an inward spiral — a gesture of attention rather than proclamation. The sculpture’s dimensions are exact: twenty-five meters, one centimeter. These measurements are not arbitrary; they bind the metaphysical to the empirical. Scale here becomes a form of devotion, an act of discipline through which the immaterial can momentarily take form. I think of Christ not as an object but as a field — a site of encounter between material presence and conscious perception. The work is complete only in the moment it is seen, yet it does not perform for the eye. It does not offer a narrative to interpret, but a condition to inhabit. In this sense, it resists the expectations of both religious iconography and modern spectacle. It proposes that meaning arises not from representation but from the intensity of awareness. The decision to title the work Christ was not theological. It was not a statement of belief but a gesture toward a historical and psychological field that has shaped Western perception for centuries. The figure of Christ represents perhaps the most overdetermined symbol in our cultural memory — an image so saturated with representation that it risks becoming invisible. To name the work Christ was to expose that saturation and to test whether meaning could still survive the collapse of its symbols. The question underlying the piece is simple yet demanding: what remains when the image of faith is removed, and only the conditions of faith — silence, attention, presence — remain? The installation of Christ at the XV Florence Biennale transformed the work in ways I could not entirely anticipate. Florence, with its Renaissance legacy, is a city built upon representation — upon the conviction that the divine can be made visible. To place my work there was to confront that heritage directly. In the studio, Christ existed as a self-contained meditation. Within the Biennale context, surrounded by centuries of iconography, it became a counterpoint — a refusal to compete on representational terms. The work’s austerity and restraint positioned it not as a rejection of the sacred but as a redefinition of it. Spirituality, in this context, no longer resided in image or narrative but in the experience of perception itself. The glass vitrine introduced a further layer of meaning. It simultaneously protects and distances, elevates and isolates. That transparent boundary creates a paradox: it denies physical contact but invites mental proximity. Viewers could not touch the rope, but their gaze could enter the space of the work. The vitrine turned the sculpture into a contemporary reliquary — a vessel of attention rather than of relics. This separation is not an obstacle but a condition of encounter. The sacred, after all, has always operated through thresholds — moments where the tangible and the intangible meet yet never merge. The glass becomes that threshold: a medium through which the visible is transfigured into reflection. In this sense, Christ is less about religion than about the mechanics of perception and belief. Religion provides symbols to mediate transcendence; art can strip them away to reveal the raw experience that precedes them. My intention was to return to that origin — to the moment before doctrine, when the need to encounter what exceeds us first arises. The sculpture is an attempt to reconstruct that moment within the language of contemporary material practice. Its silence is not emptiness but a space charged with potential, where perception can rediscover its own depth. I believe that in the contemporary condition, the sacred must be reimagined as an act of attention. We are surrounded by images that claim to signify, yet few that invite us to perceive. Christ proposes that perception itself — when fully engaged — is a form of devotion. The act of seeing becomes the act of believing. The material, in its humility, becomes the mediator between awareness and being. To experience the work is to encounter a kind of equilibrium: between touch and thought, matter and spirit, visibility and invisibility. Ultimately, Christ is a meditation on presence — on how the simplest materials can articulate the most complex states of consciousness. Its quietness is deliberate. Its refusal to represent is its statement. I am not seeking transcendence through form, but recognition of the sacred within the ordinary — within the fiber, the pigment, the light. The work is not a depiction of faith, but an experiment in its reconstruction. In that sense, Christ is not an image to be viewed, but a condition to be entered — a material prayer rendered in silence.

David Rabinowitch, “Untitled (Périgord Construction of Vision)” (2012), wax, crayon, graphite, oil, and oil based ink on paper, 26 x 26 inches (all images courtesy Peter Blum Gallery) David Rabinowitch was born in Toronto, but since 1972 he has been living in New York, where his artistic output, mostly sculpture and works on paper, has been the source of admiration for those who appreciate craft and the transmission of cultural knowledge in art. His Périgord Construction of Vision Drawings, the series currently on show at the Peter Blum Gallery, on the edge of Chinatown, derives from Rabinowitch’s extended experience in the Périgord region in southern France; he has been visiting the Romanesque churches in abundance there, and has used their physical plan as a source of information — but not as an architectural design to be copied directly, even if these inspired, highly expressive works on paper seem to echo the floor plans of particular buildings. What happens instead is a body of work that comes near to a religious experience, as effectuated by Rabinowitch’s more than considerable skill. Unlike so much art made today, which is regularly overshadowed by the wounds of personal experience (identity art), the artist is determined to render a point of view that has next to nothing to do with his personal life. Instead, the Périgord Construction of Vision Drawings take historical culture as their starting point, in a way that foregoes anything we might know about the artist — except for the remarkable achievement of his hand. Such a process is not deliberately archaic so much as it is cradled by tradition, both in a formal and a conceptual sense. If we have come to a point where personal expressiveness is valued above all else, we should be grateful for Rabinowitch’s selfless dedication to a historical presentation memorable for its piety and anonymous construction. David Rabinowitch, “Untitled (Périgord Construction of Vision)” (2015), beeswax, crayon, oil and oil based ink on paper, 17 x 13 inches The feelings of devotion in these works on paper is intense, even as they repudiate overly proprietary relations between the artist and his imagery. It is clear, I think, that Rabinowitch had no conscious idea of the implications awaiting him in taking such a stance; like any artist, he did what he did without worrying too much about the consequences. That the artist would devote himself to such an undertaking is moving, whether the emotion is implicit or formally transparent. Given our exquisite awareness of modern and contemporary art history, it is interesting to confront work whose impetus comes from ecclesiastical architecture in the Romanesque style, which was predominant in central and southern France from the 9th to the 12th centuries. But we must remember that Rabinowitch is not a scholar; rather he is an exploratory artist seeking inspiration and a source for original imagery. Brilliantly, he turns a very specific architectural period into a contemporary art language, without sacrificing either. In “Untitled (Périgord Construction of Vision)” (2015), the work is composed of several different materials: wax, crayon, oil, and oil-based ink. It consists of a circular band with small parallelograms cut into its ringed shape. The yellow background has a small number of triangles outlined on it; the feeling is at once old and new, abstract and figurative. The title treats the work as an abstraction, based on Rabinowitch’s experience but not entirely beholden to it. This work, with its enigmatic circles and triangles, is relatively direct and simple; others are more intricately presented. Another example from the series, untitled and completed in 2013, strikes me as the best in the show. Its background is a light olive green; on the left side, there are three dark-colored rectangles. In the upper right, we see a black, roof-like structure and, on the lower right, a flat, black table-top structure, while in the middle there are two straight bandings, one white and one black, suggestive of the outline of a building. The relations between the forms are inexact but intuitively convincing. David Rabinowitch, “Untitled (Périgord Construction of Vision)” (2013), wax, graphite, oil and oil based ink on paper, 19 x 19 inches The work in this show is especially appealing if we think about the today’s generally moribund state of painterly abstraction, whose emotional exuberance might be addictive to people seeking a catharsis. But a catharsis can only last so long; its intensity is matched by the brevity of its duration. In contrast, it can be said that Rabinowitch is an artist who slowly but surely builds a paradigm, two-dimensional to be sure, in which ancient constructions are put in place to effect a very contemporary visual reality. But this is what very good artists are supposed to do: use the past to bring about the present — in Rabinowitch’s case, a visionary one. Visionary art is often understood as having sprung, fully formed, from the artist’s head, but the truth is that Rabinowitch is a remarkable craftsman who painstakingly constructs his imagery. As a result, another merger exists; the artist uses traditional tools to communicate a new way of seeing. In art, William Blake is a great example of such a maker; in poetry, we can speak of Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Butler Yeats. All three artists used their access to older culture to build visual and intellectual towers of thought that remain profoundly impressive today. Stylistically, Rabinowitch cannot be closely tied to these particular examples, but he exists in the midst of a group of artists for whom conventional ideas have failed — and rather than pluck a future esthetic out of the air, out of what has not taken place, he has looked back toward the historical past. That his inspiration here comes from an established Catholicism (we assume from a time when the religion maintained a genuine integrity) strengthens and structures the paintings he has made so well. In another untitled work on paper, also from 2012, we can see Rabinowitch again reaching a

The Romans did not believe, as we do today, that to have a copy of an artwork was of any less value that to have the original. Greek art certainly had a powerful influence on Roman practice; the Roman poet Horace famously said that “Greece, the captive, took her savage victor captive,” meaning that Rome (though it conquered Greece) adapted much of Greece’s cultural and artistic heritage (as well as importing many of its most famous works). It is also true that many Romans commissioned versions of famous Greek works from earlier centuries; this is why we often have marble versions of lost Greek bronzes such as the Doryphoros by Polykleitos.   The Romans did not believe, as we do today, that to have a copy of an artwork was of any less value that to have the original. The copies, however, were more often variations rather than direct copies, and they had small changes made to them. The variations could be made with humor, taking the serious and somber element of Greek art and turning it on its head. So, for example, a famously gruesome Hellenistic sculpture of the satyr Marsyas being flayed was converted in a Roman dining room to a knife handle. A knife was the very element that would have been used to flay the poor satyr, demonstrating not only the owner’s knowledge of Greek mythology and important statuary, but also a dark sense of humor. From the direct reporting of the Greeks to the utilitarian and humorous luxury item of a Roman enthusiast, Marsyas made quite the journey.   But the Roman artist was not simply copying. He was also adapting in a conscious and brilliant way. It is precisely this ability to adapt, convert, combine elements and add a touch of humor that makes Roman art Roman. Photo’s: Ilya Shurygin.

BBC David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge 1of2 DivX MP3 MVGForum Artist David Hockney reveals startling evidence which suggests that cameras have been a secret tool for artists since the 15th century, a discovery that solves century-old mysteries surrounding famous paintings. Presented by Kirsty Wark, and filmed in Bruges, Florence and a stunning Hockney-designed set in Hollywood. Youtube: taylordiabennett Published on Nov 23, 2011 The article bellow was originally posted on TheGuardian.com Candid camera In Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, David Hockney reveals how artists caught nature with lenses and mirrors. It took a painter to show us, says Peter Robb Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters David Hockney 296pp, Thames & Hudson, £35 David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge is a short and thrilling book with big new things to say about European painting. Hockney has followed his painter’s technical curiosity into questions that have mostly been ignored by academic art history. Were the great leaps in verisimilitude achieved by European painters after the middle ages enabled by the use of mirrors and lenses?Illustrations are a large part of the story here. Linked by an exiguous text that breathes an engaging Boys’ Own practical enthusiasm, the pictures create a tension between your desire to linger on the gorgeous images and your eagerness to turn the page and see where Hockney is going. This essay is followed by a very useful little anthology of writings on optics over the last 1,000 years, followed in its turn by an intermittently interesting sheaf of letters exchanged between Hockney and various academics on his research. Hockney started from a conviction that Ingres used a camera lucida – basically a small prism on a stalk – to draw rapid portrait likenesses on paper. This is not very exciting. The big questions lie in painters’ use of the camera obscura to cast images of the real world on to a darkened wall. Secret Knowledge presents a series of simple but immensely suggestive technical notes on a series of paintings, especially on the qualities of perspective or proportion or finish that give clues to how they were made. Any medium or technique for making art creates a set of possibilities and limits that bear on the artist’s activity at every point and are inseparable from what is achieved. Some of Hockney’s best thoughts on the optics implicit in the art are almost thrown away here. The richness and precision that a projected image helped make possible in painting, he remarks, also involved the painter in another kind of tyranny or falsification, that of the monocular view of the single lens, unlike the binocular vision of the human eyes. He also points out that painters using a camera obscura were likely to have only one small part of their life models in focus at any time. So they worked moving from one small area of the composition to another, during which time the light source – the sun – and the shadows it cast would move, and a sense of time and motion would be incorporated into the finished work. Meanwhile, the painting of complex works with several figures, done part by projected part, would create problems of depth – eyelines that didn’t meet, for instance – that enhance the dreamlike vividness and the spatial enigmas of some of Caravaggio’s work. Although Hockney argues that optical devices were used by European painters from the early 15th century, 1600 was the moment when the look of European painting changed. The agent of change was Caravaggio. Some – not all – of Caravaggio’s painting uniquely compels you to grope for words in order to describe the optical novelty and disturbing immediacy of the images. They’re at once coldly precise, voluptuously real and strangely oneiric. They’re certainly alien to the geometrical perspectives of renaissance art. These paintings were all done in Rome in the decade from 1595, when Caravaggio was part of an intensely scientific and experimentally minded milieu in a household frequented by Galileo, who was then developing the telescope. His patron, Del Monte, owned one of the few copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s still-unpublished writings on art and science. Della Porta’s book on natural magic, which described clearly and vividly how the camera obscura worked, had begun circulating widely in a new edition just before Caravaggio arrived in Rome. His very first paintings don’t yet use this technique (this includes one, the Sick Bacchus, which I think Hockney misreads, since it was done before Caravaggio had access to the new technology of image projection and is a self-portrait painted, as a contemporary wrote, looking at a mirror). Later, when he was on the run, Caravaggio had to abandon the technique altogether. In Rome, Caravaggio owned and used mirrors and compasses. Contemporaries agreed that he painted directly from life. He didn’t draw, and so never worked in fresco, which needed a preliminary drawing. Unlike other painters, he marked out the limits of a few forms, a kind of elementary tracing that left tiny grooves in the wet priming of his canvases, as if to fix the components of a projected image. These techniques were secret because they were dangerous. Science and magic were equally suspect. Della Porta had run foul of the Inquisition, and Galileo would too. Hockney shows how simply this projection could be made. All Caravaggio needed was a concave mirror and a strong light source, though he might have used more. It will now be hard to deny that Caravaggio, in these central Roman years, painted from images projected like colour slides on to a flat surface. Together with the utterly different Vermeer, half a century later in the Netherlands, Caravaggio is the great instance in favour of Hockney’s case. Other painters used optical devices, but Caravaggio and Vermeer made their optics central to the way they saw the world. That is why, in the 17th century, optics in art suddenly mattered. The delight of Hockney’s book is the stimulus