Odysseus shield

HEPHAESTUS FORGE OF ODYSSEUS’ THE SHIELD

Once the work is finished, Hephaestus steps aside, he rests. The shield for Odysseus still lies on the forge. It appears to be a ridiculous defense – what can a thin sheet of aluminum do! And more: a shield already bent, battled, wrinkled. It is skin. Skin becoming skin. A fine limen between the inside and the outside. And in becoming skin, it becomes a mirror as well. A crooked mirror; a mirror beyond. And Odysseus appears – the thief – he who stole all faces and performed them. Faces for facing battle. Layers of skin. He takes it up, he breathes, he fights. But, among so many blows, so many strikes and parries, could it be that behind the "puppet" Ulysses, there beats the heart of Hephaestus? Between the striking and the lifting, is there not breath?Among the reflections of light and the atoms of aluminum, perhaps there is me...

...if to "work" in art demands sinking beyond the limen, piercing with one’s gaze the inner horizon of the eyes, to lay down—unashamed but with all a mother’s love— one’s work bare before other gazes, then one owes it to the Other not to withhold oneself, to attempt the hardest “iron path,” leaving behind useless frills and ballast. It is a path along the edge of the ridge…

Working this sheet of aluminum brought me, by beating it nearly to the point of piercing, to remain on its surface, to understand it, to appreciate its transformation. It forced me to abandon a smooth surface to find one that—through its porosity, roughness, and new way of absorbing and reflecting light— might reflect, in abstraction, a different vision of the self.

aluminium, 60x h75x 40 cm

2024