Trilogy:
Into the Singularity

Into the Singularity Into the Singularity Into the Singularity Into the Singularity Into the Singularity Into the Singularity Into the Singularity (Detail) Into the Singularity (Detail) Into the Singularity (Detail) Into the Singularity (Detail)

 

The first painting in this series, completed on a summer residency at Cooper Union, in the Lower East Side (New York) in 2006, expresses the seething singularity that percolates beneath the calm, repressed interior experience of the "realized" mystic. Fusing color, a morass of hands, screaming faces and dribbling tears of line, this 24 panel painting — measuring 6' x 72' — work explores the horrifying interior space created by the mystic's path. It is an empty, narcissistic and rudderless journey, leading only into a cul-de-sac of a-human experience.

It proposes that the goal of classical mystical attainment, to somehow move beyond the personal ego and experience of an "I," fettered to a specific time and place, is but a pipe-dream, one that does little more than simulate the drug experiences of an adolescent. In fact, the human impulses that appear to be "overcome" are simply repressed into an interior space in the psyche, leading to an extreme form of narcissism and, yes, even pathology.