Fusion Engine paintings
The Fusion Engine series look at metempsychosis (the transmigration of the soul, living many lives over time.) Over eons, one would experience different ethnicities, classes, gender, religions, roles and so on.
As I was sourcing jet engine blueprints for the sculpture/painting “Acceleration, Still” I kept seeing masks of all types within the designs… and wondered if this was some type of past-life recall. I’ve also always been interested in overlapping eras, and oopart — out of place artifacts — which challenge conventional historical chronology, like the Dendera light or Antikythera Mechanism. A Samurai-era supersonic jet, a Haida space shuttle… CONT’D
The first work was The Supersonic Reckless Warrior Matter (oilstick on aluminium, 84” x 60”) and references Kabuki masks. (This piece is also affectionately know as turboaragato — Aragato is a ‘rough’ style of kabuki). The calligraphic lines of the mask/makeup against the more mechanical lines of the blueprint, and the fact that Kabuki was once performed exclusively by women, but over time became performed only by men were metaphors that fit my interest in fluidity of identity.
While traveling throughout Asia I was struck at how similar it looked to Pacific Northwest art (I grew up in western Canada, and was very familiar with totem poles and so on), so the second work in the series references the art of the Haida Gwaii. (All the pieces come about after researching the histories, stories, myths, symbols and forms behind the work.) Like the first piece, its title is a bunch of syllables that sound like a mantra and gently rhyme: injunjetenjun. This piece was also to have a more mechanical look, and so is a metallic cibrachrome print.
The third work was myanjatanjan, based on the Palenque sarcophagus lid. I’d read the Mayan Prophecies, where the author Maurice Cotterell, cued by clues on the lid, finds embedded images hidden within the design of the lid (overlapping the image to reveal the face of a jaguar, and so on.) This idea of remixing a base image into some new form was long a practice of mine.
The next two pieces I wanted to return to the handmade feel, so using different blueprints, I made one referencing a mask from Africa and another from Indonesia (afruricanjatenjun and indojotenjon). Finally, brining it back home to Canada, the last work is a nod to Inuit soapstone sculpture (inujentunjun). This work currently exists as a digital image, but is to be a large wall work done in steel. Further works (vikinjetinjin, carnivaljetenjal… ) will involve neon, 3d printing, metal, other media…
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