"Hirst is one of the best known contemporary British artists, and controversial too; he is notorious for exhibiting dead animals in tanks of formaldehyde, and is in the record books for the highest revenue for a collection by a single artist sold at auction (£111 million in 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis).
Mocan, by contrast, is a Romanian Christian sculptor who explores the theme of death and resurrection in much of his work. Mocan's best known sculpture is 'Invitation/Decalogue', a circle of 10 giant pillars, resembling fingers from inside the circle which narrow to great blades on the outside. This was exhibited in Geneva in 2009 for the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth.
This paper explores the two sculptures first through what they assert through their form, size and audacity, before examining how death and life are actually absent from each, even though they appear to express these very themes.
Chris Watkin goes on to discuss the asymmetric nature of life and death in the sculptures in question, and how Mocan's work affirms that the two are not equal and opposite forces. Rather it's through resurrection that life is proved to be more than a match for death.
Finally, Watkin writes how there is a subtle performance of death going on in Hirst's decaying shark, and a similar performance of life surrounding Mocan's Illseed - 'a crescendo of hope'.
The Jubilee Centre is currently organising an exhibition by Liviu Mocan, entitled Vertical Libraries, at St Andrews Street Baptist Church in Cambridge, until mid-October."
This exhibition, which can be viewed until 12th October, provides an opportunity for reflection on one’s own trajectory of learning and engagement with literature:
"The normal form in a library is to display the books horizontally on shelves. In turning the arrangement through 90 degrees, Mocan seeks to explore the content or ‘verticality’ of learning and its influence on personal growth and development.
At the base of a vertical library, the emphasis is on each particular book, but as the column rises, the individual titles and authors begin to dissolve and what emerges is their transforming influence on the individual. To adapt the phrase of Albert Einstein, ‘Culture is what remains in you when you have forgotten everything you have read'."
Also to be found on the Jubilee Centre website is a paper by Anne Roberts (Outside the frame: Postmodern art) which focuses on the scope and characteristics of recent conceptual and installation art, looking first at the early development of this genre, and then examining four major aspects: the exploration of visual language and appropriation of images; art based on autobiography; work which deals with social and environmental issues; and finally art which appropriates religious imagery. The paper concludes with reflections on finding a Christian voice in response.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keane - Everybody's Changing.
