About Marc Séguin:

Originally from Ottawa, Marc Séguin lives and works between Montreal and New York. Since his first solo exhibition in 1996, his work has been presented in Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, New York, Chicago and Florida while participating in international art fairs such as the Miami Basel. He is currently represented by several galleries including Corkin Gallery in Toronto as well as Envoy Gallery in New York. (Bio)

Art takes time. It takes time to create, and it takes time to experiment as well. If the artist creates himself while he paints, I guess the spectator creates himself while he takes some time to examine a piece of art. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One doesn’t take the time to watch a film or read a book : rather, one gives some of his time to experiment with a piece of art (DeLillo plays with this idea when he writes about Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hours Psycho). Maybe art has something to do with a dance between sacrifice and gift : one sacrifices a part of his life and, in return, is given the gift of himself through artistic journeys.

Here’s an example. Just quickly surfing the web, browsing through hundreds of pictures, one would missed the fact that the above painting was created with tar, real feathers and real butterflies (all glued to the canvas). The painting is huge : the crow hanging from the Pope’s necklace is real.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2008 interview with Marc Séguin:

In addition to the road kill series you have the pope series. Is there a correlation between the two of them besides the material that you use?

Maybe. I’m really too close to all these series to reflect on it, or it’s for people like you to find a link. I’m sure it makes sense somewhere, with the use of the use of the symbol of the crow, with the idea of infallibility of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s questions there, because in that way it addresses serious issues.

Serious issues being what?

Infallibility, or the fact that we’re living in this era where we can’t question what the Roman Catholic church does, but we can question what the Quran says or what the Muslim people do, or the Buddhists or what the Chinese do, but we never question ourselves. Dogma is a very dangerous thing. They’re supposed to stand for modesty, poverty, and whatever, and here they are—posing like peacocks. They’re blown up as these big statues, presenting themselves as bigger than life, or more important than their subjects.

And here they’re tarred and feathered.

They’re tarred and feathered because it was a way, back in the old days, to tell when somebody was wrong. They’d turn them out of the city and they could be recognized for months or years, because they were tarred and feathered. (NY Art Beat: “Death Becomes Him: The Art of Marc Seguin” by Amanda Scigaj, Oct. 29th, 2008)

See more of his work at the Simon Blais Gallery (Montreal) and Charest-Weinberg Gallery (Miami). The Canadian Art website has a slideshow about recent paintings by Marc Séguin.

RedReplicant photostream on Flickr: “God the Father fishing for Leviathan”, 12th Century: Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus deliciarum: 19th C reproduction drawings. In the Public Domain.

This is a very unusual depiction of God the Father using Christ, who is strung on a line of Old Testament prophets who predicted the messiah, as the hook to ensnare Satan or “Leviathan.” Herrad was a nun and scholar whose book interpreted the history of the world. It is more than likely that she illustrated the book in addition to authoring it.

“Hermes as Harpocrates, the God of mystical silence, portrayed as the mystagogue accompanying the souls on their return to the Monad. ‘Silentium deum cole - monas manet in se’; worship God through silence - the Oneness remains in itself.” (more)

“Achille Bocchi (Achilles Bocchius) (1488-1562) of Bologna was an Italian humanist writer, administrator and teacher of law at the University of Bologna. He is best known for his emblem book Symbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere from 1555, which “takes as its subject the whole of universal knowledge: physics, metaphysics, theology, dialectic, Love, Life and Death, packaging them under the veil of fables and myths.” (wikipedia)

About Aaron Nagel:

“Aaron Nagel is a figurative painter living in Oakland CA. Having received no formal training, he is entirely self-taught; a fact at odds with his seemingly classical approach to surrealism. In his current work, he explores specific themes of guilt and power, always associated with his views on the perils of organized religion and theism” (more).

About the “Marks” exhibition:

“Marks is Aaron Nagel’s largest and most cohesive body of work to date. The eleven oil paintings in this series use imagery of youthful women in the nude, often impaled by archery arrows. These figures embody Catholic martyrs such as St. Sebastian, offering atheists and skeptics an alternative to traditional religious symbolism. As Aaron is inspired by the contrast between power and the fragility of the human body, Marks is infused with imagery that is at once calm and violent.” (more)

Visit Aaron’s blog.

Dilbert by Scott Adams, Feb. 11, 1996

“Zachary Kanin (5’3), was the shortest ever President of the Harvard Lampoon. His cartoons and humor writing have appeared in The New Yorker, where he worked until recently. He is the author and illustrator of The Short Book, which is available in stores and online now. He has written for the children’s show Thumb Wrestling Federation, and was a contributing joke writer for Phil Angelides’ campaign for governor of California.” (The Huffington Post)

Kanin have a blog but it hasn’t been updated since June 30, 2008.

xkcd : A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe. More here.