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l u m i n - U S 2 4 / 6

a n e s t h e t i c   i l l u s i o n

k a r a s e l e

b e i n g   t h e r e

s t a t i c  &  i n s a t i a b l e

m o m e n t o

h i s t o r i a

b u l l - f i g h t + d e m o c r a c y
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video glimpse
b e i n g   t h e r e

m a r c i a   g r o s t e i n

collaboration: Irving Raygoza


Praga 2005 / 2006 New York
4.43'

text assistant: Ik Ekunwe
Life and art can be summed up as what one makes of or takes away from arbitrary experiences. A few years back when painting was once again dead and had yet to go through one of its many revivals, I visited the Church of All Saints Ossuary in Sedlec a suburb to Kutna Hora, a town in south Bohemia Czech Republic.  Walking into the ossuary, this Church of Bones, this massive work of art made of 40,000 dead beings felt immediately like crossing some sacred line into an ulterior universe where one could step into a painting or film and truly experience the surreal, the bizarre, the morbidly fascinating.  Driving away from the church, I was left with overwhelming feelings of nostalgia. For what...a time and space I had no claim to, painting when it defined art, art when it was still pure and simple before the simultaneous burden and wonderment of technology)...? Nostalgia accompanied by a strange peace, as oppose to a haunting anxiety, is what followed me out of the Church of Bones. The piece, ‘Being There’, was made as I drove away from this arbitrary communion with the bones of 40,000 dead souls.