The Shape of a Hole in the Ground

2021

Installation at birds+Richard.

Bricks, steel, cedar sauna paneling, UV sauna lamps, field recording, fan, speaker, intermittent timer, found double-sided images, LEDs, UV-blocking curtain, acrylic cover for a ceiling-mounted surveillance camera, cicada exoskeleton.

I read an op-ed recently by a theologian suggesting the utility of an altar to Agnostos Theos, the unknown god. These kinds of altars first appeared in ancient Greece when the polytheistic Greeks, fearing the existence, and therefore the wrath, of potential gods who had been forgotten or remained undiscovered, built empty stone pedestals in devotion to Agnostos Theos. These objects represented what the author termed a “sacred and beautiful nothingness”1 that he wants to revive: if a subject is too vast, too fraught, we must bring its representation back closer to nothingness. Absence, in this logic, is unassailable…. read full exhibition text here

Video: Jesse Fisher