Mystidigital Embodiments
By Tom Wachunas
“My Child, strive to see supernal light, for
I have brought you into a vast ocean. Be careful! Keep your soul from gazing
and your mind from conceiving, lest you drown. Strive to see, yet escape
drowning.” - from “Drowning”, a passage in the Zohar
EXHIBIT: EMANATIONS: Charting the Interior Life, Limited
Edition signed prints by PETER MOHRBACHER /
at IKON Images, 221 5th Street NW, Canton, Ohio / THROUGH
SEPTEMBER 2 / 330.904.1377 / www.ikonimagesgallery.com
Peter Mohrbacher
writes on one of his web sites (the third link posted above) that the majority
of his images begin as pencil sketches which are then “…painted in Photoshop.”
Hence the works in this collection, currently on view at Ikon Images Gallery,
constitute a limited edition of signed, 13”x19” digital prints. “Painted” in
Photoshop? Mohrbacher is a remarkably adept draftsman who has impressively
mastered this digital technology to deliver colors, tonalities, and illusory
textures of spectacular dimensionality.
There is also an
accompanying 52-page book, with collaborator Eli Minaya, called “Angelarium:
Book of Emanations”. With images, narrative prose, and poetry, the book
references ancient texts from the Book of Enoch (great-grandfather of Noah) and
Kabbalah, the highly esoteric and scholarly tradition of Judaic mysticism.
Herein is a chronicle of Enoch and his encounters with the Tree of Life, its
ten “angelic” emanations, and his meditations on the infinite, “unknowable”
entity known as Ein Sof.
At first blush,
Mohrbacher’s images - which are essentially portraits of loosely
anthropomorphic beings who appear to levitate in strange lands and atmospheres
splashed with ethereal light - seem to comfortably fit into the iconographic
mold of the “fantasy illustration” genre that continues to be enormously
popular in our culture. But to be more precise, these images aren’t merely
silly fictions, or inane fantasies so commonly rendered in the genre. They’re
thoughtfully constructed musings on, and continuations of, the timeless
artistic tradition of probing who, why, and where we are. Though my knowledge
of Kabbalah is very sparse at best, I do know that among its tenets is the valuing
of human creativity as a never-ending process to grasp and perfect our
imperfect existence and the world where it unfolds. So in a sense you could
rightly call this an exhibit of “religious” art, albeit a departure from an
ostensibly Christian perspective.
Still, if the
“angels” pictured here are messengers or ephemeral manifestations of God (Ein
Sof), I’m nonetheless reminded of the Biblical accounts of encountering them.
Scripture often reports how humans, trembling in the unexpected presence of
these awesome beings, hear some variation of “be not afraid.” And so I found
myself imagining that if I were visited by one of Mohrbacher’s creatures – they
are beautiful if only in a freakish
sort of way - I too would tremble. At first. But then, interestingly enough,
would come their calming salutation, “be entertained.”
PHOTOS, from top: HOD, Emanation of Glory / BINAH, Emanation
of Knowledge / GEVURAH, Emanation of Severity / YESOD, Foundation of Life /
DA’AT, The Empty One
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