Chapter 7.
Graham Day Guerra. Das Ding An Sich

From 25 April to 16 Mai 2009

Think.21 is pleased to present the work of American artist
Graham Day Guerra.

In his latest series, Alpha and Omega, the artist represents an amalgamation of two ideologically and aesthetically opposed subjects. He combines today’s symbols of secular culture with the spiritual ideals and imagery of a previous more pious century.

Multi limbed figures, with superbly toned and athletic bodies, hover above sports stadia. They rise into the air - an ascesion- their forms picked out by banks of flood lighting and observed by an implied crowd in unseen grandstands.

The work abounds with historical reference. Saluting hands allude to David’s Oath of the Horatii and the overall compostions draw on various paintings of the Ascension, and specifically the ecstatic depictions of Mary in paintings such as the rapturous Assumption of the Virgin by Poussin and Tiepolo and Raphael’s
last masterpice, The Transfiguration.

Aside from its obvious reference to Catholicism the drawings also refer to human intelligence and corporeality as the beginning and end of creation. Kuzweil’s precept that the legacy of human intelligence will shape the destiny of the universe is for Guerra the philosophical point of departure for his contemporary and profane creation fantasy. This idea is concisely portrayed in the drawing Entropic Skulls, a piece depicting two human skulls locked in a Mobius strip of self-reflection, which serves as a kind of seed or egg that gives birth to the rest of the forms in the series.

Though intentionaly resembling theistic and devotional imagery, Guerra’s charcoal and graphite drawings are also impious celebrations of a material and human centered universe.