The Beautiful Captive

6.26.2008   32" x 22" Archival Pigment Print

(Printed on Harmon Baryta Fiber Glossy paper)

5.2008

The gears were splendid in their startling simplicity. Every movement precise as clockwork, and every result brought a magical appearance of anatomical delirium. Clocks became wings, shadows exchanged places with reflections, and the landscape moved with exceptional seductiveness. The wounds became glittering knives, and every glance a gratuitous weapon... The landscape is armed... (the landscape is armed by your arming.)

The beautiful captive? The central object of almost intoxicating transparency would offer no name to personify––but she was there, or was it merely the scent of her having been there that remained, a shimmering rock (twice the usual size and twice as dark, or light as her surroundings) through which can be seen the great wheels of her unassisted flight. It was the design of flight itself, the sudden act that illuminated the actual ritual, or the bath and the cleansing... Pure carbon! A barely audible sigh, like a fire kept burning for centuries.... Flight interlocked with the sea, the water of movement...

In many ways this image is analogous to the effect of the golden glow of the city of Florence, which seemed at the time to be an effect of all the newly varnished doors – and they were everywhere, on every street, every house and pensione, every establishment... those glowing wooden doors, reflecting the sunlight in a haze of serene, almost touchable––so thick was it––heaviness. However, which door? Through which door had she disappeared? So many doors and such a furious dream!

There is so much that occurs––when the gears are meshed, when the objects are measured from light to dark, and every door suddenly opened––inside the sleepwalker who had stopped calmly in the middle of the yard to look around, a moment outside of time, absolute stillness, waiting... Years of light...

6.2008

...The attempt to measure the distance between the imagined and the real, and the differences in time.

9.2008

...Analogy: An attempt to explore the method of Leonardo Da Vinci, via Valery and Duchamp, by way of modern physics...

 

..... J. Karl Bogartte - from the notebook, 2008