Index
[Lack of] Being is the liminal space following an event of shattered truths that destroyed the self. After this destruction the previous self is non-existent, and in it's place a state of non-being. It is a place where all one's notions, groundings, pieces of the heart and mind are floating in a nothingness. Time ceases to exist. Creation has yet to begin. It is after the end but before the beginning. it is vulnerability but possibility. It is the existential human condition; existence without essence: a loss-of-self while still inhabiting a confined temporal existence.
With painting, sculpture, and installation, [Lack of] Being showed at Hatch Gallery from Dec. 6, 2013 - Feb. 8, 2014. Hatch Gallery, 492 23rd St, Oakland, CA. All work and documentation by Rhea Cutillo. Thank you to Adam Hatch, Audra Cobelis, Morgan Johnson, and Monk Henshaw.
the unknown, 2013. 53X132 inches . Oil, charcoal, graphite, pastel on inkjet print canvas. SOLD. This landscape is the base of three works included in [Lack of] Being. I took the original photographs on a misty winter day, about a mile from the house I grew up in, in Pennsylvania. My hometown has grown rapidly and without urban planning. This is one of the few remaining cornfields, only protected by the neighboring pharmaceutical company. The images serve as an immaterial space for my thoughts to go as well as represent a physical loss of history. The fields I played in as a child have been destroyed and rebuilt into private homes and backyards. I imagine myself in the unknown surrounded by fog with the land laying flat forever. The tracks in essence lost are my own footprints. As I exist in the unknown, I look upon the tracks contemplating a past self. The moon in existent/directional is a sign of grounding, symbolizes a concentration in intuitive direction. This imagery is my personal lack-of-being. It is the space between destruction and creation.
"existential waiting," 2013. 55X oil, charcoal, graphite, textile ink on canvas. SOLD [Lack of] Being is about a personal defeat and a loss of self. It was created over my journey of re-establishing a grounding and sense of identity. This image symbolizes my emotional space when I was still looking for something from the outside to tell me what direction to take, or where I belong. i was hoping for a sign or opportunity to place an anchor within my life. Again, there is a horizon line that extends infinitely, but is also infinitely unattainable. The imaginary landscape contains hard rocks of the same meaningless origin, inspired by desert landscapes and Cui Xiuwen's Existential Emptiness series. The mailboxes are from a 35mm travel photograph stopping in Monroe, Utah.
shattered, 2013. 40,000 hand-carved, sustainably sourced obsidian arrowheads and shattered tempered glass sourced from broken-into automobiles. A symbol that life and death exist in every moment.
“Each consciousness seeks the death of the other.”
Being in Nothingness #1, 2013. Oil on canvas. SOLD These paintings are inspired by a few infrared photographs (of mine) as well as taken from memory. I was on top of a mountain south of Big Sur. It was a clear morning after a rainy day. We had hiked off the trail and camped in a clearing matted down by deers (presumably). The mountaintop we stood on put us at the same level as the clouds, and I could see the tops and bottoms with a dark line in between. I had never seen clouds at this perspective before. I aimed to paint these two images as a floating space in which to exist; a space with no ground and infinite sky. While on the same level as the clouds I could barely see the ocean below, and it looked as if the sky stretched in both directions.
“To seek truth is to prefer Being above all else, even in a catastrophic form, simply because it exists. ”
