In greek legend, Sisyphus cheated death, which outraged the gods, and so he was punished. The gods trapped him in eternity, forcing him to roll a giant stone up a hill, and every time he almost completed the task, the stone would roll back down over him... forever. In another greek legend, Icarus is trapped in a labyrinth with his dad. The father creates a set of wax wings, and Icarus flies to freedom. But he ignores his dad's advice, and flies too close to the sun. The wings melt, and he crashes to earth, drowning in the sea.
Fast-forward a few thousand years, and we find a skeleton, that of a "Icarus/Sisyphus" hybrid, lying in a patch of Albrecht Durer's "turf" from 1503. "Icky" as we call him, has been abandoned to the ravages of time. So bored by death is he, that he creates a 'wheel' to spin, a new exercise to entertain himself, and supposedly escape an eternity of futility. This new toy, the 'wheel', is some sort of 'sun stone'. The disc is sectioned, like an orange, or a nuclear device. Study the sun stone disc, and one finds a mermaid, with the head of Picasso's crying woman, tugging on the black shroud of Icky's heart (the child version of himself). Daedalus, in the form of Basquiat's skull, looks on in disapproval, as if to say, "if he'd only do as I tell him"... In other sections of the wheel, we see one of Icky's former lovers, doomed to travel the ether, her forlorn gaze frozen in the foggy porthole of a spaceship. In yet another section, his attempts to 'see and be seen', represented by a peacock's feather. Look further, and we see the king of hearts, the 'suicide king'. At the center of it all lies the endless promise of resurrection and redemption. The sun stone toy defies gravity, and is easy for Icky's skeleton to spin. The toy, ironically, possesses a sort of black-hole gravity. As Icky's soul tries to escape, in the form of a moth, the toy becomes a munching monster, the moth will be pursued and eaten, over and over again, in a game of eternal 'pacman'.
"The Moth Of Sisyphus (aka Icarus' Soul Ascending or Post-Rapture Vision No.4)" 2013
Velveeta Heartbreak
Brooklyn, USA
72" (182cm) x 54" (137cm), pencil and gouache on paper
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