O'Rourke


The Hours of Man

1997-98


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Content
The pieces in this series deal with time in a human life - the passage of time, the irrevocability of time, the isolation of and connection between experiences over time, our stages of time.

Each work in this series is a triptych, consisting of one large, square central panel and two smaller, rectangular side panels. The panels are suggestive of phases in a life, ages in a life - separate, and yet connected. The composition within each panel, like the phases of our lives, can be viewed as complete within the space of that panel. At the same time, however, the three individual panel compositions combine to form another, larger, much more complex, but unified overall composition.

Process
Each triptych was built up through a combination of techniques. Torn fragments of digital Iris prints suggest fragments of a dense space. These are glued to a base paper, producing slightly raised islands, "promontories" of intense color. Like the key experiences of a lifetime - formative, remembered, and yet strangely isolated from the rest of our more mundane experiences - these extracted images serve as the key nodes of the composition. From them, and sometimes over them, are fluid, hand-drawn marks of pastel, charcoal and graphite, which echo and transmute the imagery of the printed fragments - sometimes connecting them, sometimes almost connecting them, sometimes independent of them. The combination of very contemporary digital technology and very traditional, even ancient, manual technologies further echoes the theme of time.

Interspersed throughout the compositions are miscellaneous small icons representative of different aspects of our human lives: a man striding forward, but upside-down; a tiny, but forceful spiral embedded in a dense space; a sequence of gray rectangular swatches, with one of them suddenly bright green; a floating, alien-like embryo.

Titles
The Hours of Man: 1 47" x 22" 1997
The Hours of Man: 2 47" x 22" 1998