Chapter 2: Understand

ADELSON GALLERIES PRESENTS

SPAZUK

F!RE F!RE F!RE CHAPTER 2 UNDERSTAND

« My art is based on a sustained exploration of new dimensions and applications of the technique of “fumage”, that is, painting with fire. The focus of my subjects, projects and collections is the relationships between humans and the natural world.

My work explores the current reality of the climate crisis and the Anthropocene through lenses that highlight the ambivalence of humanity. This duality of human nature is reflected in the medium of fire, and carbon as soot, both of which hold the power to nurture or destroy life. »

---- Steven Spazuk

Adelson Galleries presents Spazuk’s FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!: a story telling and virtual experience. Working with fire as his primary creation tool, Spazuk’s Fumage, embodies the polarity of creation and destruction. The artist’s work explores human’s ambivalent relationship with the natural world through the lens of the climate crisis and the Anthropocene. Bridging the illusive gap between human beings and Nature through his choice of elemental media, carbon from soot, Spazuk exemplifies that there is potential to create beauty, contemplation and possibility when working with Nature, rather than against it.

Inspired by the outbreak of global fires due to the climate crisis, FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! is the artist’s perspective and response to the state of urgency that is our present moment. Released in three chapters, the collection narrates Spazuk’s realistic optimism on climate justice and systemic change. The virtual show is divided into chapters: Connect, Understand and Act, proposing a cyclical approach toward converging actions of reparation. In order to arrive at a state of systemic balance, notions of linearity and separateness must be deconstructed. Unlike classical methods of storytelling, (taking the structure of beginning, middle and end), Spazuk aims to create a recurrent unfolding process, where usually defined, finite sections are now interwoven and interdependent. There is no end and no beginning, there is only presence and re-presentation. Such is the language of art; to represent, to engage with, to question what we have been given, and ask where we go from here.

The experience of witnessing Spazuk’s work sparks engagement and an embrace of the discomfort that inevitably comes with change. Spazuk’s practice awakens us to the fact that there is no easy fix, no happy ending that wraps up the tale into a pretty bow. Instead, there is a line of understanding that carries us through the cycles of undoing and rebuilding. Like flames rising from the ashes, built on the rubble of the past; we are reminded that with all destruction there is potential for a powerful creative force to rise up and illuminate the way forward. We are always already, turning the page, humbly bearing witness to the call forward.

In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the winged Goddess of retributive justice.

She benevolently punishes mortals for their crime of arrogance before the Gods.

Around 1501, Dutch artist Albrecht Dürer mastered his image of Nemesis. She floated on a sphere, hovering above the human landscape, dominating and observing.

In one hand she holds a whip and bridle, restraining the impertinence of human beings. In the other, she holds a cup, symbolizing a possible reward for the lucky few.

In Spazuk’s reinterpretation of the scene, Nemesis stands over a desolate site.

A site of barren wasteland formed from tar sand. Nemesis does not hold a cup, rewarding those who obey, she holds an hourglass, she warns. As human beings deplete the Earth of fossil energy, we are too reducing our time on these lands. There can be no reward, if there are no recipients.

Chapter 2: Understand, functions as a cautionary tale, with Nemesis playing the main character. The chapter is composed of Nemesis, Wild Canary in the Gold Mine, Flower Power, Starling on Grenade, Tipping Point, Gas Mask with 2 Birds and a Clover, Monarchy, Hêtre ou ne pas être, Notre-Dame de Paris vs Forest Fire, and Three Wrens on a Rant. The collection is about de-mystification and deconstruction.

It is a stark reminder to own our arrogance and hubris, which is directly causing this horrid destruction. It is simultaneously about responsibility and recognition.

Like an integral mother, Nemesis and all of the works in Understand, sternly speak to the viewer, the ungrateful children who have forgotten where they came from.

The mother disciplines in order to teach. The great difference, of course, is that these images are representations of realities, not myths. We have all witnessed great Mother Earth’s wrath this past year. We have seen the Earth light up in fires, bringing smoke to the lungs of her citizens. We have heard “I can’t breathe” chanted like incantations through the streets of our cities. We are living a global pandemic. If the urgency of our humility is not taken with severity, we are assured a growing reality like that of Nemesis’ landscape. Spazuk warns FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!: do not walk, run towards justice – there is little time left.

Title:

Nemesis (The Great Fortune)

Artist:

Albrecht Dürer (German, Nuremberg 1471–1528 Nuremberg)

Date:

1501–2

Medium:

Engraving

Dimensions:

Sheet: 13 1/8 x 9 1/8 in. (33.3 x 23.1 cm)

Nemesis, 2020 Soot, acrylic and gold leaf on panel 60 inch diameter 152.4 cm diameter

Wild Canary in the Gold Mine, 2020 Soot, acrylic and gold leaf on panel 48 inch diameter 121.92 cm diameter

In Flower Power and Starling on Grenade, Spazuk illustrates the fallacy that nature needs people to evolve and sustain.

In fact, it is the contrary; humans need nature, and if we do not comply, she will pull the plug on us.

Evoking 1960’s rhetoric, Flower Power winks to the collective peaceful strength of the earth and of potential revolution.

But this time, sovereignty rises from the earth, not the people.

Minuit moins une (Starling on Grenade), 2020 Soot, acrylic and gold leaf on panel 24 inch diameter 60.96 cm diameter

Flower Power, 2018 Soot, acrylic and gold leaf on panel 60 inch diameter 152.4 cm diameter

3 Wrens on a Rant, 2020 Soot on brass plate 24 inch diameter 60.96 cm diameter

Monarchy, 2018 Soot, acrylic and gold leaf on panel 72 x 48 inches 182.88 x 182.91 cm

Tipping Point, 2019 Soot on gessoed panel 14 x 11 inches 35.56 x 27.94 cm

Gas mask with 2 Birds and a Clover, 2019 Soot and acrylic on gessoed panel 14 x 11 inches 35.56 x 27.94 cm

Diptyque (Notre-Dame-de-Paris vs Forest Fire), 2020 Soot and acrylic on gessoed panel 24 x 18 inches each 60.96 x 45.72 cm each

Hêtre ou ne pas être (To Beech or Not to Be), candidly displays the forgotten truth that humans are Nature. Powered by the sun and selflessly shared by the plants, carbon, nutrients, water and oxygen are the building blocks of life that make up our eutrophic bodies. As we greedily slash, cut, clear, burn and destroy our forests and all they life they hold, we suffocate our connection to the very beings that nurture our lives.

What will it take for humans to collectively embrace the sacredness of life?

Hêtre ou ne pas être (To Beech or Not to Be), 2021 Multi-media sculpture in glass dome with soot.

18 x 15 inches 45.72 cm x 38.1 cm

Building Materials, 2020 Soot and acrylic on bricks 7 x 8 x 3.5 inch 17.8cm x 20.3cm x 8.9cm

Building Materials was created as a reflection following the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, and the subsequent public outrage and mourning that persists today. The Black Lives Matter movement continues to deconstruct the public notions of protest, personal responsibility, and communal mindedness. Building Materials is an invitation to rethink our position in a contentious political debate – where do we stand in relation to the object in question, and - depending on our ethnicity - on what end of the violence are we either witnessing or receiving from the object? Rather than offering one fixed point of view, the artist questions the very idea of the point of view.

The viewer needs to make a choice; does one remain a passive viewer, or does one become an informed witness? Further, working as an element in the FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! exhibition, Spazuk uses Building Materials as a point of interrogation, exploring the connection between the broader traumas caused by the negation of communal responsibility to one another and our Earth. For Spazuk, the Black Lives Matter movement is yet another outcome of such separation. We must act now, in haste. Building Materials thus invites us to challenge our perspective – are we staring at the rubble in defeat, or are we just beginning to build a new structure?