STONE / Untitled 2,
2001 |
Germán Herrera's work "Untitled" depicts a man walking in circles and clearing off rocks along his path. It is photographed from above looking down; that perspective early twentieth century avant-garde artists like Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy found so revealing of modern urban life. Herrera's work is also revealing, but not of the infra-structure of modern life but of the existential predicaments of modern man. It "speaks" about the futility of repetition and the inexorable progression of time. The man walking in circles seems to be "ticking away" as might the seconds hand of a clock. Inevitably the man will come upon the same points in the circumference time after time: the eternal return of the same. The stones in Herrera's work may very well stand for emptiness and/or barrenness &endash;a neutral or negative backdrop. But "Untitled" also suggests a paradox involving rocks as obstacles that humans clear along their path. Clearing obstacles may render life more fulfilling but making the journey too easy may result in a humdrum meaningless existence. The fact that the man is about to reach twelve o'clock may also allude to the well-known analogy of geological time projected onto a calendar year in which humans appear on the last minute of the twelfth hour of the night of December 31st. |