Exhibition Documentation of Parallel Paradise
35mm photography, bronze, ceramics
Digital image by Natalie Logan
The installation of Parallel Paradise is arranged to evoke a sacred space, an altar, a place of ritual for the veneration of the erotic. The central altar is the exhibition's main focus, a circle surrounded by ritual objects and erotic iconography. Reclaiming the ritual objects of catholics, who stole it from an older world.
A small bronze sphere hangs from a long chain from the tall ceiling. The bronze incense burner, the Touching Tails Ultrasonic Safe Psychic Space Incense Burner, a dark moon, hovers above the water, rippling its reflection in the carpet. The carpet, Abyssal Puddle, is a gentle invitation to lie down and view the exhibition from this position, surrounded by representations of pleasure. The shimmering holographic tactile print on the carpet water, a sign of arousal for women –cum, juices, gushing. It is large enough for two people to lay on, soft, slippery, float in the abyss. Different perspectives and views exist simultaneously.
Hanging above the circular carpet, the sphere incense burner is the most dense object in the room, heavy, made of bronze. The dark moon is the densest mass in the room; it has gravitas. The sphere of bronze calls through infrasonic wavelengths from the touching tails of the luna months on the bottom and the smell of forest we burn resin to denote a sacred ritual. The tails of the Luna moths affect infrasonic wavelength, we touch tails. In this work, they are nearly imperceptible on the bottom of the bronze sphere. You would have to be lying down on the carpet to see them. They are nocturnal animals and represent the darkness. Our familiars, the moth and serpent, also undergo transformation like bronze, like the resin, like ourselves. The bronze undergoes a transformation in fire, like the oak forests, and like the pine resin incense that smells of the forest. This bronze sphere holds the power of smoke and fire. Using bronze denotes sacredness, a material reference to other ritual objects of ceremony. There is weight to the sphere although it fits in the palm of your hand. Opening the sphere reveals its ceremonial purpose, with a delicate grate and hollow centre to burn incense. The Touching Tails Ultrasonic Safe Psychic Space Incense Burner reclaims the censor from the christian lexicon. They reverberate at the edges of sight, sound and smell. We light fires in our sacred space. We fill it with smoke and the smoke fills us. Aromatic smoke draws on subconscious visceral responses and reflects our intimacy with the world, is erotic, and connects us with our deep somatic appetites (Strand). Aromatic smoke delineates the space separate from linear time; the resin tumbles over and drips onto the forest floor leaving our mark with fire in the darkness.
