by John Gorman

Artwork Description

Tragoidas

0.0 x 0.0

Tragoidas, black pencil on Khadi paper, 30x30cm Troias Tragōidia: Tempestuous Immortal. Here the heroes and the choir merge into a pyramid-like composition. Some of the silhouettes are discernible at least in their contours, others are only fragments of bodies and/or heads, usually hidden under the thick mass of black pigment, or wearing plaster masks. The density of this group is fusional but not organic. And the scene is devoid of any eroticism. The figures at the bottom of the composition seem to lean with difficulty on their hands or feet, and bear the inexorable fate of those at the middle and upper levels. Although this is a semi-figurative work, what catches the viewer's attention is the inextricable web of lines and strokes that run throughout the work, like thorns and briers embedded in flesh. Like the characters of a linear B brought back to our doors and metamorphosed into frugal and thrifty arabesques. This work, the author tells us, is about Tragōidia. I would therefore add Troias Tragōidia, the Tempestouous immortal chariot, or Achilles' three-horsed chariot that is able to move through the sky. Summoned by whistling with two fingers in his mouth, it appears from the sky, controlled by reigns on the driver's stand, according to legend. But here I use this term as a metaphor for what the artist reveals by veiling it, that is to say precisely that, combined with the written word, leading to the story of the Thinking. I use the word narrative, which does not exist in Heidgger's world, or only in the form of quotations. John Gorman explodes this foreclosure, this sterile retreat into a dead, though timeless, thought, by giving it this title, and by referring it to the great myths and epics of Greece, but this time 'coloured' by the monochromy of the pencil gesture alone. In so doing, he brings to the work of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century the missing piece of his chessboard, i.e. an incarnation of the sign in an artistic form, written but not frozen, composed of graphic characters worked by the artist's hand at the same time as by his brain. The master's work is given a chance to come to life, and, as if the ice that buried it had melted, the permafrost thawed, here comes the supreme and its jewels, the Thinking and the Being, at last, welcome temporality. Delphine Costedoat

Artwork Details

Medium: Drawing Other

Genre: Figurative