Dark Angels series of renderings inspired by Walter Ben­ja­min's reference to “The Angel of History” in his visionary 1940 essay “ On the Concept of History.” In the essay he pays homage to Paul Klee‘s Angelus Novus, and uses his image to create one of the most remarkable metaphors of the Twen­tieth Century. He describes History as an Angel…

His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Continued >

This metaphor changes our perception of what an Angel is and can do. Throughout the history of western art, angels have been depicted as beings who are made of light, or who have heavenly power and intention. I find Benjamin's Angel as one who is trapped and in many ways oppositional to the traditional "angelic" view. I see a darker side to angels and want to explore that — if not dark, then at least in op­po­si­tion to light — side of angels in a series of re-imaginings of angels in western art. I also find it fascinating to work with Angels because of their under-the-surface “rhizomatic” con­nec­tions to things we don't usually associate with their con­cep­tual­iz­ation. For example, Satan is a fallen angel, and his name before his fall was called Lucifer, or “light bearer.” Although this re­la­tion­ship is contentious among theologians, it is interesting to see this alternating association between the unfallen bearer of light and the fallen king of darkness. Old testament Angels were sometimes warriors for God. There is an amazing de­pic­tion of, I believe, Archangel Michael, on a .       .

mosaic in the Mediaeval cathedral on the Isle of Torcello, standing at the entryway to the last judgment with his wings crossed in front of him and covered with dozens of eyes.* These are the sorts of Angels that I find most interesting.

Angels are much more complex than the New Age "beings of light" and my intent is to explore the flip side of Angels, and try and wrestle back the representation of angels away from the simplistic.

* Refer to the creature in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy 2, an “Angel of Death” whose wings are covered with blinking eyes.

< Previous