2024

Failure (terror at night)

Multi-layered mono prints on frosted gel, 210cm high, printing ink, shellack, oil paint.

"The path of love is so hard to travel because there is so little faith in love, because it meets the distrust on every hand."
(Hesse, 1919 reprinted 2018)

Herman Hesse, one of the greatest literary figures of the German-speaking world, wrote his earliest essay on the bloody absurdity of war in September 1914. Reading his anti-war essays (originally published in newspapers and compiled in If the war goes on ... Canongate, 2018) in Spring 2023, a year after the ground invasion of the Russian Army into Ukraine, Hesse's anger, clarity of thought and urgent appeal to the power of love and the arts in practicing pacifism resonate strongly today.

The 18 monoprints reference stained-glass windows or backlit cybachrome photos. Wickedness, the wilful ability to do evil is present all around us. Failure (terror at night) is an attempt to update the iconography of stained-glass windows, including 21st century machines linked to human wickedness.