View for printing
A Mimetic Psyche


Author: Ray David
[published in: IMAGE 15 (Ausgabe Januar 2012)]

Catchwords: Apollo, Dionysus, chaos, order, dialectic, rhizomatic, mimesis, metaphor, metamorphosis, the figurative image, Attic (black-figure) pottery, Attic (tragic) theatre

Disciplines: Fine arts: Mimetic painting art practice, Philosophy: Applied philosophical enquiry


Apollo come dance with me explores, through my exegesis and art practice, the expression of chaos and order as a creative paradigm in Ancient Greek Attic (tragic) theatre, Ancient Greek Attic (black-figure) vase painting as well as my painting art practice. The project is comprised of three suites of paintings and an exegesis that examines the mimetic, metaphoric and metamorphic expression inherent in these three forms of art practice. The exegesis details the methods, methodology, philosophy and psychology of their visual expression.
The point of engagement with tragic theatre’s chaos-and-order creative paradigm in my art practice is through my utilisation of portraits of myself and my family members to represent characters from the Theban plays by Sophocles. In so doing, my contemporary art practice depicts the individual and society in terms of tragic theatre’s exploration of human experience: the social, psychological and cognitive relationships of the characters with each other and with the external world.
I use the technique of superimposition in my art practice to explore assemblage, layering, multiplicity, duality and dichotomies as vehicles of artistic enquiry. The process of creating multiplicity and difference in turn generates metamorphosis and precipitates an engagement with forces of chaos and order in my paintings. Philosophically, superimposition is used to employ a rhizomatic system of consideration and construction, as described by the philosopher Deleuze and psychoanalyst Guattari. This rhizomatic process enables me to transform a visual representation of Hegel’s dialectic philosophical system of enquiry into a philosophical expression of affirmation through multiplicity and chance – akin to Nietzsche’s notion of the same.
The utilisation and representation of a chaos-and-order creative paradigm in my painting art practice is facilitated by the pre-eminent, and most enduring form of visual expression – that of figuration. My art practice engages, in the broadest sense, with the creative forces utilised in artistic cognition and the cosmos and in a more specific sense with form and space, as well as line and colour. In so doing, the project details my understanding of the physics and psychology of change, chance and metamorphoses as forces of creation.

[Artikeltext]


Volltext des Artikels:

03_IMAGE 15_David.pdf