Akolytus Luciferi
2019
72” x 48” x 50”
My friend Armando’s first amp, a Marshall AVT 50 which her purportedly told his mom he sold is soul upon receiving for musical prowess, ¾ plywood, LED strip lights, french charmeuse, a french holy card dating from 1920 portraying Saint Michael defeating Satan, candle lighters cast from 20 lbs of antique pewter dinnerware, Cat’s cellphone battery which caught fire on her and Diego’s first date, Amal’s family heirloom and charm, the blown tube from Armando’s amp, weeds growing outside Wassaic, six 10” celestion speakers, a 12” 50 watt speaker for the inner chamber, and plexiglass bent to an occult looking shape. Growing up I was an acolyte at my local church and was in charge of lighting the altar piece before the procession. Around the time my family stopped attending church I received my first guitar and a switch happened. Here I cast my candle lighter from memory and lay it to rest. This piece was a functional guitar amp and used at Wassaic in a ceremony with myself and others.
DISTORTUS
2019
114" x 102"W x 54"
This piece is modeled after a french gothic organ, and influenced by Psalm 150:4 ("Praise him with stringed instruments and organs") In my research I became aware of the growing movement of turning historic organs into digital instruments, so I set out to build an electric organ I could play my guitar through and charge certain objects with magical energy.
The middle chamber on this work is occupied with objects that I have a magical history with. The objects include palm leaves from my parents yard, gold dust given to me by a close friend, candles cast with the residual wax from a fire in my studio, Cuban coffee, a hand blown glass piece modeled after an imagined alchemical instrument, a holy Chalice cast in tin, and the ashes from a guitar I built, played, and then ceremoniously burned. Inside this chamber is an 8 in speaker which was fitted to bathe the objects in sound, while a 12 in speaker on the lower portion of the piece bathed the gallery space in sound. The piece was a guitar amp that I performed with daily, the performances consisted of me playing through the piece with a clean signal and the lights off, and then pushing my pedals and footswitch to add distortion and turn on the fluorescent lights in the piece. My aim was to draw a line between the distortion of the guitar signal and the objects inside the chamber, that these objects would gain new meanings that could be felt by the audience.
The Infinities of the Rose
2019
78" x 18" x 18"
holy Water from the Jordan River (the river Jesus was baptized in) was procured and used to cast a plaster hand pointing to the heavens. This was used to analyze the folding of time, to connect with an act from over two thousand years ago, and to see the systems of trade and reinvention of a product.
holy Water from the Jordan River from what I presume to be a Russian company acquired through Ebay, painted stone, glass sheets cut and adhered to form a vitrine, one hundred dried roses strung through a wreath and suspended from the ceiling, and foam and joint compound painted with enamel and glossed over with a canned finish.
My Journey to the Stars
2019