Installation view with Minotaur figure - 8 feet tall

 

Tragical, Comical Installation click here for more views

Essay by Kathleen Hancock - Gallery Director

In our life’s journey, we know few things.

We are born and we die.

We long for connection.

Many of our belief systems incorporate particular rituals – and some of these customs explore notions of death and regeneration. They represent, in symbolic terms, our essential struggles with what it means to participate in the cycle of life, of understanding our place within the universe. It is thought that basic shapes such spirals, circles, meanders, and labyrinths describe this longing for identity and connection.

These archetypical elements of expression have survived thousands of years and are manifest in countless ways. In visual language spirals can be defined as universal symbols of growth, ever expanding. In ritualistic terms, labyrinths are a manifestation of the cycles of birth, death, and renewal.

B. Lynch is both a painter and figurative sculptor and makes works that often cross disciplinary boundaries. Through traditional and contemporary media such as video and installation she looks at the ways in which elemental questions such as – Who are we? Why are we here? – have been approached through out the ages.

The installation of “Tragical, Comical . . .” Art Shaken and Stirred via the Literary Tradition, provides the opportunity for each of us to experience a walk through the labyrinth, to descend into the underworld and return once again to the light of day. For this particular exhibition, Lynch’s place of reference is the myth of Orpheus, his journey through the underworld to bring his lover, Eurydice, back to into the world. A story like this, though framed within the context of Greek mythology, has played out in numerous ways across the centuries. Contemporary renderings include the novel Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows or the recent film, Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo Del Toro. The challenge, the test of worthiness, the willingness to risk one’s own life for that of another, is timeless.

 

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