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Uxmal - New York A Mayan Diary "When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet, I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains." C.G. Jung. Uxmal; from those ghostly ruins there still emanates the magic energy of a whole civilization. New York; is where I live, a place that will also become one day, with the perpetual gnawing of time, a faded and forgotten skeleton. This body of paintings was created in a musical, serial, tonal and repetitive style. The main image is one of the Mayan corn-god Wak-Chan-Ahaw. The one who made everything happen, who created the universe, and who fertilized the world. He is dressed, or undressed, by two beautiful naked women, mothers-lovers-goddesses who throughout their gestural offerings bring him back to life, to germination. This image is a metaphor for the human soul resurrection from the underworld journey after defeating the Lords of death. This scene from the Mayan mythology takes place on the first day of creation, under water, in the primordial sea, and therefore has a very strong relationship to cosmogonies and the human unconscious. Some images come from contemporary pornography, also featuring its archetypes of phallic resurrections and germinating offerings. Other images are from shamanic drawings, some are spatial representations of the Axis Mundi, while others are drawing from shamanic journeys I have experienced under hypnosis. There is also some vulvas genetic patterns, and some imprint of classical Mayan vases and ground-stone chisels. The work is still in process and new images are integrated during the realization of new paintings. The paintings will be presented side by side; the arrangement of the work will be determined by the configuration of the exhibition space. It would be best to have a wall measuring at least 32 feet long, on which I could install seven paintings to clearly express the cyclic pattern of time.
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| All texts and images are © of Jean-Pierre Sergent 1996-2005 | |
