Timothy G. Wicks
“Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artifact we create. The making of a fish-hook…or production of a television program all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night…” - W.G.Sebald, The Rings of Saturn.
The ship, it is possible, isn’t sinking. Hopefully that’s the case. Yet even the most casual glance at our experience in the world now and its relationship to science and industrial growth, with all its wonders and devastation make a positive outlook a challenge at the least. Even so, I meet the fire this time with paintings of water.
Gold, which traveled here on meteorites, is thought to have sunk towards the planet’s core in the Earth’s youth, the result of the precious metal’s density. Our hubris is power enough to pry plenty of “the yellow metal that makes white men crazy” as Native Americans have said, to the surface.
With deepest grief, and your forgiveness I hope I have put some of the conquering, bloodshed and tears to use here.
For more information about the artist, please visit his website.