(FURTHER DETAILS)
OBJECT / SACRED RITE PERFORMANCE:
The eternal flame hangs in the form of a suspended candle in the center of the art piece burns throughout the entirety of the piece which is initiated and extinguished by sacred rites that are both homages and authentic ancient Baltic prehistoric rites, a surviving Proto-Indo-European relic which effectively dissolves time due to its intrinsic sacred utility of blessing and unifying the living and spirit worlds. The eternal flame is directly in the center of the exhibition space at the height of a 6' tall humans head at the opening rite then gradually lowers to the center point of said human during the closing rite.
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VIDEO:
In a sort of reverse stop motion animation technique where instead of moving the subject of the photography, J. Kimo Arbas moves himself within places of power, accentuating the "artists brushstroke" by disjointing common linear time sequence thru tens of thousands of individually captured moments from the eye of the artist which offers an umbilical chord of timeless connection to the artists profound visceral experience of these specific places of power. The underworld and the celestial world together with our world embodied by the viewers physical presence in the exhibition space combine respectively to make up the triad of the cosmos.
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All surfaces of the exhibition space are covered with projections. The West wall is covered top to bottom with original celestial imagery including total lunar eclipse, andromeda and milky way galaxies, full moon, night clouds etc. The East wall is covered top to bottom with original underworld imagery including lava tubes, caves, 900 million year old rock formations from the bottom of extinct oceans, a volcanic crater lake at night, etc. The North wall is an abstraction of the celestial projections. The South wall is an abstraction of the underworld projections. The underworld imagery occupies a trapezoidal shape on half of the ceiling and celestial imagery occupies a trapezoidal shape on the other half meeting directly in the center of the ceiling diagonally from South/West to North/East. The floor has a reflective coating therefore it reflects and distorts imagery and light from all walls and ceiling which is effected by the position of the viewer and others in the exhibition space.*
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SOUND:
The sound element of the work is comprised of field recordings of water gurgling in the Los Angeles river which flows into the Pacific Ocean with the faint sound of the 5 freeways traffic (Atwater village, California) in the background, this was recorded exactly one year prior to the exhibition in the beginning of spring, this sound fades into the sound of wind blowing through the tops of alpine evergreen trees (Holcomb valley, California) with the occasional bird chirping, recorded exactly six months previous to the exhibition during the autumn. The sound composition then fades into the first field recording from the river only now the sounds become gradually more and more expressionistic due to Arbas's manipulation and "sound sculpting" of the field recordings until they become heavily psychedelic and other worldly culminating into a crescendo which abruptly drops back to the naked field recording of water gurgling and the cycle begins over. The sound is projected in such a way as to cause a vortex. The audio experience is always different depending on where one is located within the piece.*
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*All imagery and sound cycles are staggered so they never repeat a combination in the space and are designed and configured to cause a spiraling vortex of sensory stimulation with the eternal flame object directly in the center of the volume of the art piece at human (6' artist) height beginning from the head and gradually lowering to the mid point of the human body.
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Contact: ArbasArt@gmail.com
