Auraboros
May 4th, 2012
at Bad Avenue
212 East Fifth St.
Greenville, NC
In this exhibition the idea of the
ouroboros and the aura are combined and explored.
A Brief History:
Ouroboros, the snake eating itself, is
an iconic and ancient symbol for eternity, infinity, and rebirth. It is truly a multi-cultural phenomenon
that snakes its way through the ancient worlds of Egypt, India,
Mesoamerica, Norway, and Greece.
Plato describes a self-consuming animal
as the first living thing on earth and an immortal, mythologically
constructed beast.
Its used to describe the kundalini energy
that lies at the base of the spine in Hindu tradition. "The
divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like
a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth
and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body", according
to the 2nd century Yoga Kundalini Upanishad.
The
“feathered-serpent” Aztec god Quetzalcoatl has been carved into
stone gnawing on its tail on Aztec ruins.
In Norse mythology,
the serpent, Jörmungandr, is one of Loki’s three children thrown
into the ocean by Odin. He grew to be so big that he encircled the
earth and clinched his own tail. He is also known as the
Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. When he lets go of his tail, the
world will end!
Carl Jung has described it as an archetypal
part of the human experience and Psyche.
There is something inertly wrong about
the idea of a snake eating its own tail. Its both seductive and an
abberation. Its hypnotic and makes no sense, yet is easily
understood.
Exhibition:
These porcelain baby snake pins are the
initial impetus of Auraboros. I was talking with some sculpture
students at Pitt Community College who were working in clay and I unconsciously rolled up a
snake. I had been searching for
something small to make for a “pin exchange” I was going to be participating in at the Yuma Art Symposium 2012. These baby snakes made the perfect theme. After producing about 40 small versions of
ouroboros in porcelian, I realized that I happened upon something,
although as commonplace as the human skull in tattoo culture, that
could relate to everybody.
The paintings and the sculptures show
variations of this self-consuming idea. In one ceramic sculpture a
boy rides a wild wolf, which is biting an ouroboros snake.
Another is more loosely associated with
the idea, a ceramic bust with a toy dinosaur conjures up the inner child's
fascination with dinosaurs and dragons.
The plaster figure is
posed in a yoga asana that I think I invented. The repetition of the
triangle shape three times is appealing.
The aura is a play on on the word ouro
(Greek word for tail). I think of these paintings as aura
possibilities, as well as the animals in the sculptures, the subject
of my thesis research at East Carolina University 2008-2011. These auras could be extensions of our physical body, mental thoughts, and/or simply our imagination.
Art Avenue AKA Bad Avenue:
A small group of artists are engaged
with transforming this former bakery into an art gallery and art
studio. There's something cyclical in nature to this activity. A
building and its former inhabitants made a product that fed the
community. Don't get me started on the symbolism of bread! Yet the
community could not support such a basic need. It has been in under-use ever since.
The attempt to turn this space into a
place of the creation of art and of the sharing of it, is an
ouroboros of real estate. To say nothing of the joke of financially
eating yourself. Bread feeds the body and art feeds the mind.
-Andrew Denton
