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In the Fall of 2009 New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World had a show of relics made during the Prehistoric Copper Age. These objects were produced before cities, writing, or the invention of the wheel. I had read about this exhibition in the New York Times prior to the opening and subsequently ordered the catalog. In it were images of ceramic representations of the female figure made at the beginning of the fifth millennium BC in a village of what is now northeastern Romania. The largest of these figures is 8.6 centimeters tall. This set of figurines has been interpreted as a cult complex and an English language interpretation calls it "The Council of the Goddess." The discovery of these diminutive models has inspired heated debate as to the role women established for themselves in society at that time. Men seemed to take care of the business of tribal relations and trade, while the ceremonies represented by the clay figures seem to have emphasized the dominant role of women inside the house, and perhaps were associated with the veneration of maternal ancestors.
It was this collection that inspired the morphology and installation of the work and it was the size of the gallery space and satisfying the logistical requirements that determined the number of pieces. I had to bring them into the gallery from Southington as the work was done there.
The name of the exhibition comes from the abstract of the Dissertation titled "The Effects of Concreteness on Learning, Transfer, and Representation of Mathematical Concepts" written by Dr. Jennifer Kaminski, Ohio State University, 2006. "In a series of experiments, undergraduate college students learned instantiations of a mathematical group that were generic, relevantly concrete, or irrelevantly concrete. Relevant concreteness was found to promote quick learning. However, the benefit of relevant concreteness did not extend to transfer. Relevant concreteness hindered recognition and alignment of structure between learned domain and a novel isomorph (emphasis added) which resulted in transfer failure." (Kaminski).
An isomorph can be defined as "an animal, plant, or group having superficial similarity to another although philogenetically different." Also, 'concreteness" as used above can be thought of as specificity in the discussions of feelings, experiences and behavior; as opposed to the use of the terminology in general or abstract forms.
It is this definition that may have inspired Theo van Doesburg, in 1924, to coin the term "art concret", or concrete art, to mean the opposite of abstract art; that the art does not distort natural models and depends on lines, surfaces, and colors and usually follows a geometrical principle, e.g. Op Art.
My use of concrete has little to do with Kaminski or van Doesburg. I like it for its elasticity and its ability to stand up to compression. It can be painted or stained and saturated with sealants to extend the longevity of the art outdoors.
I am presenting these pieces as artifacts in an array representing a ceremonial moment not as the actual human participants. I think of it as it might have been represented as a bas-relief carved in stone much later in history; as if having been pulled from the wall or column igniting the process of decay.
Although I have prepared the installation for temporary viewing in the gallery it's true home will be in an outdoor setting. If there was such a religious ceremony, one that honors a goddess, I want to depict it in a wide-open space. To that end the media is concrete on steel lath shaped over painted wood. The use of the encaustic medium is strictly for the purpose of this event and will almost certainly flake off once exposed to the elements. I dry-brush the medium over the surfaces; the more uneven spots in the surface contours seem to gather the wax more readily and the result is a layered effect. A new color is created when the new hot layer melts the one below.
- John T. Adams
May, 2010
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