Inheritance (2018)
3′ x 3′ x 10′
glass, solder, copper, light
A rumination on passage of time and intergenerational experience, Inheritance takes its inspiration from prehistoric paintings in Northern Spain, where red ochre pigment was blown through a pipe to create a series of discs along a cave wall, a practice whose significance as artistic or documentary endeavor is unknown today. Due to the cave’s spiritual place in paleolithic society, some archaeologists have suggested the marks are religious in nature, while others hold that the blots are a documentary record of high-water levels within the cave during annual floods or some other such periodic occurrence. This piece rests at the intersection between these hypotheses.
Reimagining these blots as multi-faceted spheres of glass, I realize the marks as a series of souls, amalgamated under the weight of their own experience into unique orbs. While there is significant variance with respect to their multipartite surface geometry, uniformity of color as well as composite shape reflect the similarities held interpersonally.
While each orb is located discretely in progression, the light which it projects overlaps that of those which are adjacent, to a greater or lesser degree depending on proximity to the wall upon which the piece is mounted. This positioning is determined by the paths of the two copper wires from which everything is suspended. These wires are intended to suggest both the geometry of the cave which they mimic and, more allegorically, experience of a non-linear progression of time.
To say we have not changed since the stone age is of course arrogant. However, the fact remains that neurological evolution as we understand it is remarkably slow, and so we are experiencing our modern world through brains which have been carefully attuned and sharpened to our experience, but which nonetheless are similar to those of the beings who left their mark on cave walls 40,000 years ago. The majority of what we take for granted as personal intelligence is a product of social learning and conditioning, and so we necessarily take with us a record of all our predecessors which is subconsciously evinced in every action we take. This piece aims to acknowledge that legacy.