The Nostalgia of the Infinite
October 2nd, 2023
I know that tower, I’ve seen it myself with my own eyes in a dream or rather just below my closed eyelids during a napping slumber on a Sunday afternoon when the shadows lay low and long. I wasn’t paying much attention to it, I was more interested in shadows that were creating ever-new shapes on a curtain drawn down purposely to bring a dusky mood to the room where I was. The simple fact that I knew it was there was enough. It was there in my mind as an archetype of something. I am not sure of what, but it was definitely connected to infinity and its melancholia. I guess there is something infinite in every tower and every tower is infinite as it touches the sky and then, by extension, touches the empty cold expanse of the universe, which we know is infinite itself.
I wonder why we as humans in general stopped building towers? We build very tall buildings, lustrously menacing skyscrapers, as modern temples to the sole god we still have — Mammon, and as holding pens for routinely sad office drones or as compensating opulent wet dreams for the wealthy — but not towers…
And I know the color of the ground as well. It is the color of raw earth — which should be out of place as a material used to pave the plaza, but it isn’t. It is the color of meaty and freshly tilled earth that comes through the cement and asphalt and stones and marble and takes over the artificial creations of humans. I have never seen a plaza of any kind in that color, but in this painting, it seems just correct. I didn't know that colors could be archetypes as well, but I understand this color and the need the artist had to use it. Shadows and a sliver of an arcade also had to be painted in this exact way — to bring forward the uncertainty of being at any particular moment — the uncertainty we try to escape with every breath and every action we take.
