Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner are ageless myths deconstructed from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces . This is the legend of a hero’s journey, or monomyth, from the physical world’s limitations to absolute awareness of the Jungian “Self,” the totality of the conscious and unconscious mind. Referencing both the film and the opera, The Tannhauser Gate examines the image, commencing with the 1986 televised explosion of the Challenger shuttle, as the catalyst in an ontological search of the Self.
By highlighting the slowly vanishing boundary between images and our reality the series of images will highlight the fundamental consequences of image consumption. The Tannhauser Gate represents a personal path to enlightenment from the hero’s initial call to adventure from the ordinary world of reality to the supernatural/mythological world of the image and back again.
The Tannhauser Gate, 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
33 x 40 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
The Apotheosis of Edgar Mitchell, 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
20 x 42 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
January 28, 1986, 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
24 x 33 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
The Wise Old Man, 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
30 x 23 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
74 Seconds (Christa Made It), 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
24 x 33 in.
Edition of 3
Signed by the artist on label, verso
33 Strangers, Entangled in my Laptop, 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
28 x 33 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
Interference, 2011
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
33 x 63 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
The Belly of the Whale, 2010
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
23 x 34 in.
Edition of 3
Signed by the artist on label, verso
An Ending (Ascent), 2012
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
20 x 20 in.
Edition of 5
Signed by the artist on label, verso
As Above, So Below, 2011
Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
43 x 40 in.
Edition of 3
Signed by the artist on label, verso
Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner are ageless myths that mirror Joseph Campbell’s famed novel Hero with a Thousand Faces . This is the legend of a hero’s journey, or monomyth, from the physical world’s limitations to absolute awareness of the Jungian “Self,” the totality of the conscious and unconscious mind. Referencing both the film and the opera, The Tannhauser Gate examines the image, commencing with the 1986 televised explosion of the Challenger shuttle, as the catalyst in an ontological search of the Self.
By highlighting the slowly vanishing boundary between images and our reality the series of images will highlight the fundamental consequences of image consumption. The Tannhauser Gate represents a personal path to enlightenment from the hero’s initial call to adventure from the ordinary world of reality to the supernatural/mythological world of the image and back again.
