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I'm excited to present you a show with concepts I've been formulating for the past twenty three years. These 22 new works will be the first installment of over 80 paintings!
The Contreras Gallery and I proudly invite you to...
Image on flier: Guillermo Gómez-Peña representing the Four Negative qualities authored by Steve Holmes. "Ignorance, stupidity, fear and oppression are destroying my home, my nation, and my world, and are being pursued in a willful calculated approach by many people in this country and indeed by the very people who currently hold the reins of power and their small-minded, virulent, delusional supporters."
Statement for this series...
When I was thirteen, the number 11:11 began appearing everywhere, seeming almost to follow me. In my attempt to decipher its message, I assigned the cryptic number to the four directions, North, South, East and West, each element traveling on their own separate path. It was then that the concept of dynamic sets of individual, yet collective, members of a family was born. At that point, 11:11 stopped being a number and became a symbol that grew into the impetus for this project.
The intention of this series, ‘The Socratic Codices- The Eleven Eleven Series’, is to shine a light on the phenomenon of age-old esoteric relationships found in every aspect of human experience. Each piece in the series has its own theme combining a coherent family of four elements. These families range from the familiar four directions to the lesser known (in Western culture) Bhutanese motif of the four harmonious friends, the elephant, hare, monkey and partridge. To date, I have compiled research from the past twenty years to produce the imagery. All in toll, I have gathered and outlined more than eighty families, a remarkable collection. But I must point out, I did not discover them but rather stumbled on their symbolic commonalities.
The title of this series refers to the ‘Socratic’ method which is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. ‘Codices’ is a Latin word meaning “trunk of a tree” referring to the pre-Columbian Aztec pictorial books made from the Amate tree. The goal of ‘The Socratic Codices’ is my attempt to intervene on the behalf of society and nature, to highlight the connection we have between the two, that has so easily been forgotten.
Ruben Urrea Moreno September 2011
The Four Nobel Truths: Dukkha — The Noble Truth of Suffering, Samudaya — The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering, Nirodha — The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering, and Magga — The Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of Suffering.
