Tag: skull

Everardo García González – [+] Re-nacer (2016); [↖] La Espera (2018); [↑] Tu cruz (201X); [↗] Desprenderme (2016); [-] Proceso (2018); [↙] S’Acrofa (201X); [↓] Title unknown (201X); [↘] El deseo de… (201X)

The aesthetic of González‘s work feels like a deconstruction of fantasy art from the late 80s/early 90s steeped in sci-fi/survival horror video games then filtered through a metal-culture inflected preoccupation with the subversion of Xtian iconography.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the male gaze-y-ness of the work from a macro perspective–there’s an inescapable vein of feminine embodiment with death/apocalyptic tropes as well as a sense that as the viewer you are a party to a sort of theater of the vaguely macabre/unsettling in a way tending more towards authorial, marionette like control of elements than a sense that what is seen is authentically correspondent to any sort of lived experience on the part of the women depicted; the religious icon side of things pushes it decidedly towards objectification.

But with regards to the more post-apocalyptic goth tone and the impressively faux photorealistic rendering, this actually overlaps with something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately–namely: I’ve realized that I am increasingly disenchanted with contemporary photography/image making. Usually, I encounter something a couple times a month that becomes a mini-obsession; those hat stick around for longer than a week or two go on to become things that I come to love.

I’m finding stuff I dig still, definitely. But either I’m no longer tapped into the right Tumblr realm or there just isn’t as much top notch work getting out lately? Mostly, the stuff that is meshing with me tends to be older stuff that I somehow missed out on and am only know digging into.

Being the type of person who needs constant input, I’ve been delving–increasingly–into the work of illustrator. This isn’t entirely surprising. I was a huge comic book nerd in the mid-90s. Sadly, I wasn’t into the artier stuff then and preferred the more blockbuster fare.

But I’ve actually dived fairly deep into Geof Darrow’s back catalog and am finding a lot of ways his work is illustrative of discrepancies/shortcoming between my personal vision and my creative output. (González illustrates the connective tissue between a rather outlandish notion I have for installing my work at some point in the near future and reinforces the value of the time I’m spending with Darrow’s drawings.)

Source: everardogarciagonzalez.blogspot.com

[↑] Kerbcrawlerghost – Detail from cover art for Weregoat’s Pestilential Rites of Infernal Fornication (2016); [-] Christian Martin Weiss – Untitled (2017); [↙] Source unknown – Title unknown (201X); [↘] Chitra Ganesh – Girls with Skulls (1999)

My initial thought had been to just throw this out there as an Acetylene Eyes All Hallow’s Eve  themed post. But I’ve been pondering transgression a lot lately, so…

If you consider the Xtian belief that humans were given free will but in order for us to truly be free we had to be presented with the option to choose slavery by eating of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…

Except that’s already functionally wrong. The notion that freedom is less than intrinsic and is instead given or revoked suggests an overarching framework of command and control structures–which isn’t freedom, it’s authoritarian.

After the Biblical Fall, humanity is supposedly saddled with a sinful nature. (Again, logically this doesn’t track given that evangelical theology posits that Jesus was the both God and Man but if by being born he became human, then his sinful nature would’ve precluded his distinction of being without sin. The idea that Jesus was born with a sinful nature but never surrender to its temptations is truly a semantic dodge for the ages.

But what interests me is the inter-penetrative nature of sin and salvation–the latter both precludes and is necessitated by the former. If you remove either concept, the other becomes essentially meaningless.

There was this enormous tug-of-war in the Evangelical community when I was in high school in the 1990s. The notion of once saved always saved–by which rational I am still a Xtian–and the sin and salvation two-step (commit a sin, ask for forgiveness, sin again, ask for forgiveness again).

I don’t know how that ever shook out because I 100% stopped caring shortly after I became aware of this schism. (Judging by most Xtians these days, I’d say things landed decidedly on the side of once saved, always saved but that’s not at all scientific.)

But it occurs to me that sin is such a prerequisite for salvation, that perhaps sin is salvation.

The assertion seems like pablum until you stop and carry out a grammatical investigation of the way the concepts are used in context. A sin is wrong doing or making a mistake. I prefer the latter way of framing it. Because when you make a mistake–you either learn from it or continue making the same mistake. (There’s that famous criteria for insanity–wherein someone performs the same action again and again each time expecting a different outcome than the one that manifests.)

I don’t like the way that Xtianity situates sin as something motivated by guilt instead of a desire to learn and grow. (This manifests in other ways–where Xtians believe the world is going to end soon and do not really give more than half a shit about what they leave in their wake for subsequent generations.)

And I guess that’s my point here–I wish you all on not just today (but especially today) that you may not be afraid to trangress in favor of discovering that what you’ve been told isn’t a transgression or that it is and why it is so that you can learn and grow–so you become more instead of less.

Rimel Neffati – Title unknown (201X)

Death, The Last Visit
Marie Howe

Hearing a low growl in your throat, you’ll know that it’s started.
It has nothing to ask you. It has only something to say, and
it will speak in your own tongue.

Locking its arms around you, it will hold you as long
as you ever wanted.
Only this time it will be long enough. It will not let go.
Burying your face in its dark shoulder, you’ll smell mud and hair
and water.

You’ll taste your mother’s sour nipple, your favorite salty cock
and swallow a word you thought you’d spit out once and be done with.
Through half-closed eyes you’ll see that its shadow looks like yours,

a perfect fit. You could weep with gratefulness. It will take you
as you like it best, hard and fast as a slap across your face,
or so sweet and slow you’ll scream give it to me give it to me
until it does.

Nothing will ever reach this deep. Nothing will ever clench this hard.
At last (the little girls are clapping, shouting) someone has pulled
the drawstring of your gym bag closed enough and tight. At last

someone has knotted the lace of your shoe so it won’t ever
come undone.
Even as you turn into it, even as you begin to feel yourself stop,
you’ll whistle with amazement between your residual teeth oh jesus

oh sweetheart, oh holy mother, nothing nothing nothing ever felt
this good.

Mutsumi Yamamoto – Untitled from L’Eros Sacre (2010)


Death, The Last Visit
By Marie Howe

Hearing a low growl in your throat, you’ll know that it’s started.
It has nothing to ask you. It has only something to say, and
it will speak in your own tongue.

Locking its arms around you, it will hold you as long
as you ever wanted.
Only this time it will be long enough. It will not let go.
Burying your face in its dark shoulder, you’ll smell mud and hair
and water.

You’ll taste your mother’s sour nipple, your favorite salty cock
and swallow a word you thought you’d spit out once and be done with.
Through half-closed eyes you’ll see that its shadow looks like yours,

a perfect fit. You could weep with gratefulness. It will take you
as you like it best, hard and fast as a slap across your face,
or so sweet and slow you’ll scream give it to me give it to me
until it does.

Nothing will ever reach this deep. Nothing will ever clench this hard.
At last (the little girls are clapping, shouting) someone has pulled
the drawstring of your gym bag closed enough and tight. At last

someone has knotted the lace of your shoe so it won’t ever
come undone.
Even as you turn into it, even as you begin to feel yourself stop,
you’ll whistle with amazement between your residual teeth oh jesus

oh sweetheart, oh holy mother, nothing nothing nothing ever felt
this good.