The Tempus Formare Cycle
The consortium of artworks entitled “Tempus Formare”, which means “time as form” in Latin, is a complex grouping of art works-three sets of seven-that examine not only our experience of space/time and how that knowledge has changed over the development of our culture, but it is moreover, a survey of the development of Western philosophy, from its mythological beginnings, through the evolution of geometry and harmonics, and finally expressed in post-modern terms.
The number seven is significant because it corresponds to the harmonics scale as first described by Pythagoras. This scale was to become one of the centerpieces of early Western philosophy. It was eventually synthesized into Hebrew ideology, and developed into a vastly complex, and sophisticated worldview commonly referred to as Kabbalah. It is virtually the same philosophical model that serves as the subtext for much of early Christianity and found expression as a more generalized philosophy in the ideas of many philosophers, (Kant, Newton, and Hegel to name but a few). This harmonic scale of seven is also represented as a universal esoteric archetype–a special symbolism dating back to early civilization. The system evolved to include an additional three entities, bringing the total archetypical number of dimensions that can be found in all things to ten–three and seven respectively. It is of interest to note that this is exactly the number of dimensions physicists and mathematicians today now believe exists in our universe.
The Kabbalah is one of civilization’s oldest, most fundamental reality models, if not one of the most influential. Often misunderstood as “Jewish” philosophy, the Kabbalah is in fact a foundational philosophical system from which the entire tradition of western thought arises, or at least owes much of its ideology to. It is a system designed to enable an individual the attainment to attain the knowledge deemed to be essential to successfully negotiating balance between the polarities of the physical and the metaphysical. Historically, Kabbalah’s influence on all spheres of knowledge cannot be overstated. Kabbalistic philosophy is so basic to our culture’s self-expression that it could be argued that both modernism and post-modernism include the latest incarnations of the long tradition of Kabalistic concepts. Both are comprised of huge sums of Kabbalistic influence.
Part of the extremely complex esoteric system of Kabbalah is a
concept called the “Tree of Life”. The “Tree of Life” is a
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conceptual matrix that symbolizes creation as divine thought and represents its metamorphosis through the ensuing contraction of different dimensions of our universe-a series of meta-energetic limitations that finally express themselves in the manifestation of matter. These dimensions are referred to in the Kabbalah as “Seferot” and each has its own character and is holographically comprised of the same dynamic number of dimensions. There are 10 Seferot in all, each corresponding to 10 separate dimensions of reality. They incorporate the system of the Pythagorean harmonics, which in turn can be translated into the seven corresponding energetic values of the spectrum, or correspondingly to the harmonic scale. Above these seven dimensions intrinsic to the birth of physicality is an additional three. These are expressed as white, black and gray as they are “above” the other visible wavelengths of color. This symbolic tree is the same one referred to in the Old Testament. Its place is paramount as an archetypical symbol in our culture.
The source of the cycle is a group of photographs I did-studies of seven bodies moving through time. The exposures of the camera had been set to maximize the abstract blurs left on the film. From this body of images all the artworks in the cycle emerge.
The second group of artworks in the cycle that make up “Tempus Formare” is an assemblage of seven close-up abstractions of the original images–each an individual sculpture. Each sculpture is proportioned according to the geometry of the golden mean, and then cast in white resin. In this second set, the distinction between the subject and the space-time around the subject has been completely obliterated–which is the existential condition of each body in point of fact according to our current model of reality. Although each of these simple sculptures seems very minimalist in style they are not void of subject matter. To the contrary they are actual crystallizations of the geometry of time in the original event. They are not formally subjective in any sense. Each three-dimensional panel in the second set objectifies, not only the time surrounding the moment the picture was taken, but the ideas inherent in our philosophical evolution as well.