From out of darkling shadows rise such complex creations of varying form; heady in perfumes of stories that sit in the back of the mind of chance encounters and brilliant in such temporal spectrum beauty that mysteries great and small drop from petals as dew in the change over from dark to light. What judgement is felt from such velvet slips? What deductive properties do stigma and stamen need to create and move from one heart to another? And all too soon, reluctantly, hesitating in fading hue, like stars of the silver screen there is an unfolding as they return to the centre of all things, the genesis – of bone, blood and flesh. This challenge of the purest of beauty in all its variance and form is furthermore reinforced in the fragility of blue winged faeries metamorphosed from grubs to the most delicate of butterflies, ephemera personified. Vibrant in such shortened lives and to what end? To what purpose?
Such magnificence on small and grand scale screams out to each individual, either within the whisper borne upon the gossamer, necromantic wings of such tiny messengers of fate and hope or in the tears of dropping petals, a question of permanence to be found. Modern mankind seems to spend so much time contemplating society position as well as effective longevity. Is a butterfly aware of the impact such layered colours have upon the heart and soul of a believer? Is there an understanding of purpose in the search and consummation of precious moments in a life so short? And if such shimmering creatures are able to afford themselves the privilege and rights of skin tearing depth, what is being done by this human race? How is life structured or created in light of such a short and yet opulent time frame?
Is a flower aware of ticking moments? Is there a sense of regeneration that causes colours to rise up calling to harbingers of eternity? Does a flower have to be of the soil to cause momentary weeping in the celebration of existence? True beauty is often unaware of its own impact, and innocence unable to view the pain that surrounds both its origin and end. These images both magnificent and splendid, in all their forms, call out of the soil, out of the beginnings and ending of all of us, a question of existence and awareness. Who shares what and how does it sit within the soul of each of us?
In all of this inexorable rapture, the pulchritudinous result is still at best, ephemeral, merely a snippet in time and space. The ultimate metaphors for the supra-existential. Waste no time in the sense of what is passing. The wounds of life and love are not hidden beneath such stunning reminders of the soul. Standing in the presence of twisted torsos and skin marked in time, of time and through time, questions abound. What of time? What of meaning? Is all existence precious and does each part of mankind, miss or perceive its own terrible beauty in the flash of being that this universe affords?
Throughout all of this – there is the pull of power, heart ready to explode from the revelation of secret knowledge that lies in ready view of this paradise in which we exist. But to lay mankind as king over such fragile and delicate structure belies that nature of man and instead, the echo of Actaeon’s folly, an eternal reminder of the fragility of the ego, watches over and bays into the forest of imagination, for each story and tale to step forward.
Each tiny messenger – each droplet of colour upon shaped palette, is it part of an eternal consciousness? Or is each twist, each memory and line of complexity the sharp edge to a creative identity shared? Perhaps it serves to humbly offer the ultimate gift, and in each part of each shape, there mankind also has the choice to sit. It can only be for the viewer to decide.
Images: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012
With Jean-Bastien Lagrange & Anthony Thévenoux
These works have been produced for a solo exhibition with the same title taking place at Magazijn in Amsterdam from 12 April – 14 May 2012