Kontak 540 Collection - Artist Statement
Man's ephemeral and inconsequential existence.
Origin
I grew up with a religious perspective on life, employing faith to bridge the gap between what we know of our origins as humans and what we don’t know. Over a period of 7 years, from the age of 30, I slowly came undone. Where previously I found comfort in faith, I now discovered serenity in doubt. My thinking transitioned from faith to skepticism, from spirit to nature, from eternity to the present moment, and from 6,000 years to 540 million years…
Contact
In 1836, on the last leg of his epic voyage upon the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin visited Cape Town, South Africa and stood in this exact location. Here he made an important discovery about specific geological developments that helped him to suggest that the earth had been around long enough for his natural selection hypotheses to be true.
Darwin named this site, the "Contact”—in Afrikaans, “Kontak”—because 540 million years ago, at the Contact, molten granite magma was injected into the black sedimentary rocks and formed a complex, mixed zone stretching across 150 meters along the coast. [1, 2, 3]
Ocean
Coincidentally, also 540 million years ago, there lived a sea creature, called Sycchorhytus, which marks the earliest known step in the evolution of humans. The fifth artwork in the Kontak series, "Saccorhytus 540", is named after this creature, our most distant ancestor.
Time
In comparison to the 540 million year old rocks where Darwin stood, our short-lived, ephemeral existence becomes utterly inconsequential. On the scale of evolution and the age of the cosmos, our constructed identities, to which we attach so much importance, is of no consequence.
The Artwork Titles in the Kontak 540 Collection:
Book of God's Works
To give credence to his new discovery, at the beginning of “On The Origin of Species," Darwin quoted the philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon, who is credited with having developed the scientific method, “Let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word [the Bible] or in the book of God’s works [nature as revealed by science], but rather let man endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both.”
Read Pierre’s essay in relation to this piece.
1836
Reportedly, in 1836, on the last leg of his epic voyage upon the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin visited Cape Town, South Africa and stood in this exact location. Here he made an important discovery about specific geological developments that helped him to suggest that the earth had been around long enough for his natural selection hypotheses to be true.
In our ephemeral existence, man is a mere reflection in nature.
Monuments of Time
Of his discovery in Cape Town, Charles Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species, "A man must for years examine for himself great piles of superimposed strata and watch the sea at work grinding down old rocks and making fresh sediment, before he can hope to comprehend anything about the lapse of time, the monuments of which we see around us."
We think of these rocks as inconsequential, but they were here long before we came into existence, and they will be here long after we have transitioned to dust, and most likely, long after our species have gone extinct.
Frontiers of Self
The more we discover about our biological evolutionary roots, the more we are humbled about our inconsequential existence. We are endlessly challenged to renegotiate our place in the universe, to expand our sense of self, to relinquish our previously held beliefs. What beliefs are you prepared to surrender in service of the Truth?
Read Pierre’s essay on surrendering the self with a slight tug from psychedelics.
Saccorhytus 540
Coincidentally, also 540 million years ago, there lived a sea creature, called Sycchorhytus, which marks the earliest known step in the evolution of humans. The fifth artwork in the Kontak 540 Collection is named after this creature, our most distant ancestor.
Artwork size and aspect ratio.
The size of each artwork is based on the mathematical equation, “The Golden Ratio" and is an expression of "time" (540 million years) and "space" (150 meters, the Contact area), as it relates to the theme.
Refer to diagram.
15,000 cm / 540 = 27.78 cm (width) > 45 cm (height)
The Model
Sven-Eric Müller is a ballet dancer, actor and model. He is represented by Samantha Bernardi Artist Management.