#1 of a set of 2

Organik: Christopher Wilde, Marshall Weber, Kurt Allerslev
Turmeric and cayenne pigments, ink, graphite, and pigmented wax rubbings on Shikoku, Rives BFK, and various handmade papers. 

Meditations constructed from the global matrix of memorial plaques documenting the wrath of various fires including the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire in NYC, the firestorms of Dresden, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, and the Gold Rush town fires of 1800’s California. Numerous texts weave through the books and consider the relationships between destruction, cleansing, and the burning that seeds the fields of human folly and transcendence.

The typical uncompromising Organik approach to the use of both image and text in a challenging, non-narrative, aleatory collage environment is further complicated by the exquisite horse and buggy relationship of the two books which are optimally meant to be read together, one placed snug above the other, in a random cavalcade of page-turning.

As usual Organik asks the reader to abandon not hope, but rationality, and awake from the sleep of reason and immerse oneself in the act of seeing/reading in a metaphorical sea of affective history. Rationalism having birthed “The Bomb” has failed, these books inquire as to what might come next; we can’t think our way out of hell after all can we?

Matrix Sources:
Manhattan, New York City:
Library Way, 41st Street
42nd Street, Park Avenue, architectural plaques
Union Square, labor history plaques
Foley Square, N.Y.C. history plaques
Greenpoint Nature Park, Brooklyn, NY
Mark Rothko’s gravestone, East Marion Cemetery, the North Fork, Long Island, NY
Passenger Pigeon Memorial, Black River Falls, Wisconsin
Murphy’s, California, state and town historical markers