Fluxations In Static Blue

Here is the gallery write up for an immense immersive ambient work I created entitled Fluxations In Static Blue for the gallery space.

The idea of this immersive installation is to allow the viewer to become fully enveloped by the detail and texture within the markings of the artwork. The complex interaction of lines will act to stimulate the viewer, who may then begin to experience the movement of the piece. Of course this movement is movement within the viewer being stimulated, the act of observing being dynamic. Further this allows the viewer to begin to observe the complexity of activity happening in the perception of themselves and their surroundings, which is far more complex and detailed than one is usually aware of. Becoming aware of this immense complexity is the basis of an ecstatic response.

It is akin to a shift of view point, seeing what is not usually noticed in a habitual setting, or more so, to an opening of a vista. It is analogous to when urban dwellers visit remote settings and find a night sky filled with complex and detailed textures of an immense multitude of stars. This shift in vista can be awe inspiring, even disturbing, seeing revealed what is always there but what has not been habituated to as the usual environment. One may feel displaced, that they are elsewhere, even while knowing the setting to be the same.

This is the nature of "standing outside" in the classical definition of ecstasy. And when this happens to the personal sense of self, beginning to find the complexity of perception and activity of self, the opening vista feels again as one standing outside, or even as other, as this shifted sense of self contrasts greatly to the usual sense of self to which one has been habituated.

 

What is Ecstatic Automatism?

All the marks I apply to my art are done through a process best described as Ecstatic Automatism. It is a process of repeatedly and continuously stimulating an automatic ecstatic reflex. This results in an explosive and rapid movement of mark making on the working surface. The image is generated rather than constructed, with me standing outside of the composition.

This ecstatic response is also stimulated within me by viewing the results of my work. This is one of the guides to completing a work, the degree which the image stimulates the ecstatic experience within me. I have seen this response in other viewers at various levels. Hopefully the image holds the same potential to stimulate a degree of ecstatic response for everyone who experiences it as well.