Inversely

Portraits/Nudes Back to collection
THE WORK / STELLA KUKULAKI
Dimensions
3x70x100cm
Year
2013
Materials
Oil on canvas


The triptych "inversely", "directly" refers to the well-known depiction of the three wise, tranquil monkeys with closed eyes, closed ears, and closed mouth of Asian mythology. It also addresses that - from the perspective of a modern man of the western world - the same, crucial to human happiness, question of the relation of the subject with the outer world. It even looks conversing with the same-subjected myth of Buddhist and Confucian tradition, questioning: Is avoiding the so-called objective reality, often absurd and obnoxious, feasible, and if yes, does it give the desired inner peace and fulfillment? Honestly, is "evil" indeed a "bad" thing when seen, heard, or said? Does alienation, indifference to the man of the next door, "the foreigner" - the “hell” according to Sartre -, the shift to the internal life, ensure stoical apathy and nonchalance? Is the removal from the turbulence of society, the political distancing finally offering carefree and irresponsible bliss? The "Inversely", without blunts and misconceptions, with emphasis to power and benevolent disposition, affirming the belief that there is no happiness in the selfishly entrenched universe of man. His life used to be full of color, and now has turned achromatic, grim, consisting of constants that do not exist anymore, like the constants that compose the identity of Euler: eiπ + 1 = 0. It is indeed interesting that this equalization consists of fundamental mathematical constants: 0, 1, i, π, e. The most remarkable mathematical formula according to Feynman. Blindness, passive ignorance of social impasses, human pain, cruelty and ugliness of the world do not overwhelm our internal tensions. The aversion of our face from the “man of the next door“ who’s looking forward to our attention, our words, does not sooth and definitely not resting our soul. It’s like the Freudian mechanism of "repression" which tries to push to the unconsciousness everything painful and scary, without bringing peace and redemption after all, but instead, it returns neuroses and mental explosions.

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