BEAUTY: Photography--Peter Ravn

The crawling men in the photographic work of painter Peter Ravn capture the mood...

Artist Statement:
"My work is about the basic existential conditions of relations, interactions and the relationship between the individual and authorities and the norms of society. About the conversation a person has with him or herself throughout life. Nobody hears this silent conversation because it takes place within us. To get closer to this, I eliminate the exterior just as ‎I try to avoid contemporary identity markers in my figures.

I am preoccupied with the human ability, or should we call it disposition, to rationalise after the event and attribute a deeper meaning to our often rather arbitrary life choices. Doubt and regret in a grown and dignified person’s life is almost taboo, to stop and confront this takes courage and has consequences. On the other hand, doubt about the doubt is gnawing in the background if you continue as if nothing had happened, and often this course of action comes at a great price. This conundrum is present in the psychology of the individual and its existential search, but also in the western way of thinking, and in our streamlined societies where we are rarely presented with alternatives to conformity."

Indeed, Ravn's suited men seem to be victims of conformity, crawling from the weight of it all, hoping to slip away unnoticed from its despotic eye.

https://peterravn.com/

A Black Day

This is a black day for us here in the United States and ultimately for the rest of the world. I feel nauseated the way I did on 9/11. My country has been hijacked by idiots and fools who fell for the lies of a con man--look at the electorate map and you will see, predictably, the midwest and south, the backward areas with the lowest IQs and the highest poverty rates, overwhelmingly voted for racism, sexism, and bigotry. And angry, older, white males came out in droves. There goes any bit of decency or humanity left in the collective American spirit. This is an ugly country now, one I no longer know--a country of fear, anger, hatred, violence, ignorance, and mistrust. I am deeply disappointed and in despair.

This fascist liar is going to ruin all of our lives... and those who voted for him, and those who voted for anyone else other than Clinton, have allowed it to happen. You were trusted with a vote and YOU LET THIS HAPPEN. We will all live to regret it. He has vowed to reverse every Obama executive order including orders for gun control and minimum wages and the ability to use stem cells in vital medical research, he has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act which will allow the insurance companies to again gouge and cheat their insured while denying coverage for pre-existing conditions (all the diabetics in the south are in for a rude awakening), round up and eject over two million tax-paying undocumented immigrants, cancel US participation in the UN climate change programs, throw a wrench into the works of the Iran Nuclear Deal, ravage trade deals and add a 45% tariff on goods coming from China (sorry Wal-Mart shoppers, your shopping trip just got a WHOLE lot more expensive), spend 20 BILLION dollars to build a tin wall which could tip us into a recession again, and cozy up to a murderous dictator (Putin got what he wanted! America now has an idiot at the helm). Anything good that happened in the last eight years is going to be annihilated.

Well, I give up. The "people" have spoken and if destruction is what they wanted, that is what they got: a Republican controlled House and Senate and Trump to guide them all. But at least I live in California where Clinton won by a large margin. We also legalized pot and passed some extremely strict gun laws. And we voted to keep our humanist, Democratic leaders. So...I'm just going to go ahead and have a nice life here in a kinder, more liberal corner of the country despite him, and try to ignore as much as humanly possible anything to do with him for the next four years. Let's see what shape the country is in then...
Oh, and to the midwest and the south: you're on your own. We don't trust you anymore, with anything.

Sorry world. We tried.