Brief:
Rob Jones for the Swan Station - revealed via trustmejustleaveitbe.com/dcpb/X/
Sold Out. Artist website - www.animalrummy.com
Gallery1988 blog about the print: g1988.blogspot.com/2009/10/frame-10.html
ReverendMilo Review:
Rob Jones is yet another rockstar in the poster world that became part of the illustrious 16. This Austin TX based artist makes powerful images, often imposting but sometimes with a layer of humor beneath.
This is a full bleed print using what I am guessing is the remaining red pigment of the world's resources. It is almost a like a crash course in semiotics - i-ching hexagrams, iconography, hieroglyphics, and primitive symbology. I had to look more deeply into this staggering piece. The hieroglyphics we are familiar with, the same ones we saw when the countdown went critical in the swan station - and I think the standing consensus is to go with Damon's translation "underworld". However, with the i-ching hexagrams (we see pieces of the hexagrams all the time in the various LOST bagua's) the artist obviously researched and hand picked the hexagrams he wanted to use.
First up: hexagram number 49 - "Ko" (using my amazing google skills to find an i-ching online site got me this) "Ko is believed in only after it has been accomplished. There will be great progress and success. Advantage will come from being firm and correct. (In that case) occasion for repentance will disappear."
The second hexagram - number 29 - is "Khan" - (also ganked from an online i-ching site) "Khan, here repeated, shows the possession of sincerity, through which the mind is. penetrating. Action (in accordance with this) will be of high value." I will not try to interpret meaning for you, I just like pondering it.
Rob also slips us a bit of primitive symbology, done in a reflective varnish to ponder. They are waves, electromagnetic waves perhaps? Swan the animal, resting on the waves of a pond - Swan the station, resting atop a pile of EM wave radiation.
The final symbol I would like to touch on is the symbolic representation of the swan. There is debate running round about this swan. Some prints have what some are calling a registration error, others are calling intentional. At least one copy of the print does not show red in the eye of the swan, but mine does. To me, it looks intentional, the registration error does not occur anywhere else on my print, and with the "registration error" my swan looks far more menacing and imposing than the one image I have seen of the swan without the red on the eye. If it is a registration error, I like it. Is it one of those amazing random chance instances where a mistake improves the art? If it is, then I am proud to be one of the lucky ones. If it is intentional - well with Rob's talent, I think it is safe to lean on the "intentional" side of the fence on this one, dont you?In person this print will blow your eyes out of your sockets and have you scrambling to put them back in so you can get a second look, or at least it did me that way.
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