Our culture shapes how we perceive the normal events in our lives as well as the ways in which we try to interpret life’s mysteries. Increasingly reliant on quantitative analysis in arriving at our worldview, we now arrive at conclusions and assumptions that, in the past, would have been explained by myths, fables and superstitions. Understanding the function of myths in a social structure serves to clarify various stages in the history of human thought and also helps us to better understand contemporary life. Mythological stories reflect the vulnerabilities of human existence through the manipulations of superhuman beings. Our work explores this notion of frailty by building on examples from past societies where myth supplied models for human behavior. We begin working with a story from mythology and remove its narrative, producing an animation that becomes a visual cacophony of moving imagery, totally abstracting the original story while still reflecting its content.

 

Looking at legends through contemporary eyes, we are better able to understand how we continue to be as manipulated by our culture now as we were in the past. Many of these myths, ostensibly lovely, romantic stories, are quite brutal. telamon is the story of Perseus and King Atlas, who Perseus changed into stone. The tension, in an abstracted way, creates a thin line between the grotesque and the beauty of human life.

 

telamon is a suite of 10 pigment prints.