Icarian Dream

Chapter 2

An Imperfect Heart Sings like a Candle in a Storm draws inspiration from Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel the Elder. It is one of my favorite paintings. I love it for its mundane depiction of a tragedy. The story of Icarus is a familiar one: it is a tale of freedom, dreams, and pure naiveté.

This work is crafted from unfired claybody embedded with resinite or pre-fossilized amber. I sculpted it the same way a potter would a clay vessel, one hand on the inside and one hand on the outside, pressing and pushing against each other. This gesture molded the sculpture’s subtle bulbous-like forms, as if a creature is swimming beneath the skin, yearning for release.

The intention is to convey something fallen from the sun into a foaming sea. It’s an earthen body charred by light and by dreams.

I often contemplate on the concept of dis-embodiment and the Lacanian idea of Jouissance, when one has so much excess of life that it is painful. Pain disembodies us. Pain reminds us of our bodies; it forces us to reconcile with the mortality of our physical self. Recently, I have been thinking about the idea of monsters. Monsters are creatures with a body but without agency. Zombies. Vampires. Werewolves. They act without rational thoughts. They have no control over their own body. Are we dreamers, or those who yearn, not also monsters? We chase our dreams without full comprehension. Our dreams are what compels us. Our dreams are the invisible force that galvanizes us, that which gives us life. Like a moth falling for the moon, or Icarus to the sun, we long and we hope. We pursue our pleasurable pain, and through this pain, we spill outward, as grotesque, as monstrous beings whose insides exist on the outsides.

Space and Time are essential in my work. The Fresnel lens has a motherboard with a cellular signal. And my heart with a Fitbit, in turn, has its own cell phone and cell number. Through this setup, my heart calls to the fresnel lens. To call is to touch at a distance. To call is to make present that is not, to bring close that is far, to make tangible the intangible. I’m sure that, at some point during the exhibition, the light will fail, whether due to a burnt-out bulb, a loss of cellular signal, or perhaps even my own ultimate, un-timely absence. Fragility is apparent: with each pulse, each flash, each call brings the potential of the final beat.

So, then, how do we hold on to this fragility? Perhaps we can’t. Perhaps it is like touching the sun, or holding onto each other’s breath. What will we do, how far will we go, how much will we bend?

ft. Daniel Legut