Downcast eyes

Terms such as paranoia, narcissism, and exhibitionism suggest how powerfully visual experience, both directed and received, can be tied to our psychological processes... Vision has been frequently linked by psychologists to the "normal" emotions of desire, curiosity, hostility, and fear. The remarkable ability of images originally construed as mimetic representations or aesthetic ornaments to be transformed into totemic objects of worship in their own right also bespeaks vision's power to evoke hypnotic fascination...
All excellent example of its (vision) power can be discerned in no less central a human phenomenon than religion. From the primitive importance of the sacred fire to the frequency of sun-worship in more developed religions... and the sophisticated metaphysics of light in the most advanced theologies, the ocular presence in a wide variety of religious practices has been striking...
No less symptomatic of the power of the optical in religion is the tendency of the visionary tradition to posit a higher sight to the seer, who is able to discern a truth denied to normal vision. Here is so-called third eye of the soul is invoked to compensate for the imperfections of the two physical eyes. Often physical blindness is given sacred significance, even if at times as a punishment for transgressions against the gods.

One of the concepts

The general subject of my work is a dramatic conflict between the nature as a “given” reality and industrial system as invention of man. Consuming the environment, people do not take in account its live essence. The mechanism of industrial system has run its course and it cannot stop. For me, I had a long experience of living in a highly polluted area of my home country (the Ukraine), where everyone can feel the post-effects of industrialization.
The image of nature which I want to draw is far from mythological “wild force” or scientific “phenomenon of the universe”. I would like to express an idea has become so apparent today – “the fragility of nature”. I want to construct an object which will represent, in a certain symbolic way, the interaction between the nature and our industrial reality.
My way to realize this idea is intrinsically connected with materials I want to use. I believe that materials represent a certain meaning by themselves and they can even suggest the concept. I would like to use ice sculpturally to represent the fragility of nature.

I think that the most interesting part of this work is a performance. It is a natural process of ice melting. By this I want to show the declining of an environmental system. The red colour indicates violent intrudance of idustrialization into the nature. The metal construction symbolizes a system that provides this declining.

Olena Karasyuk