12 DAYS 12 NIGHTS / NEW YORK

1st day

DAY ONE: NOV 14, 1997

THE CAPTURE OF THE MAN-EATING MARES
A FALLEN ANGEL ON THE AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

Garbage bags, dollar bill, sand, mixed media on canvas
200 x 100 cm

MYTHOLOGICAL INFORMATION

Hercules succeeded in capturing the man-eating mares rather quickly. Filled with pride at his rapid success, he left the captured horses to his friend Abderis. But Abderis was not strong enough to hold them. They trampled him to death and escaped. Thus, it became necessary for Hercules to capture the mares once again.

DAILY DIARY

Confronted with this story, a visitor referred to the ever accelerating senseless cycle we are all caught in. Human abilities, to a great extent, are misused to produce things which nobody needs. To insure this misuse creative forces are needed: military technology, advertisment strategy, etc. This has taken on dynamics of its own, something which was reflected in the story of a man who kept walking back and forth in front of the gallery here at the Avenue of the Americas. It was raining and he had wrapped himself up almost entirely in black garbage bags. He told about his Gulf-war experiences on an aircraft carrier. As a consequence of this he was put under psychiatric treatment and was discharged from the Navy. Now he is a homeless person living on the street and he calls himself a "fallen angel".

The emerging painting started to become more and more a portrait of this man Ð molded from garbage bags.

Late in the evening a visitor read aloud from a book he had brought along. It was a poem from the thirties by Langston Hughes. It ended with the line "OR DOES IT EXPLODE ?" Not long afterwards this line appeared next to the dollar bill on the canvas - the question mark at the end inverted: a hint at a future currency that represents more comprehensive values.

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