DO WE NEED NEW GODS?
Acrylic on canvas
100cm x 150cm (+20 cm frame)
With a blood-and tear-stained face, Jesus is uttering a savage cry of revolt and despair from the heart of his Jewish ancestral land. He hangs over the abyss of existential nausea. It feels like he has been obsessed with his death, when he realised that his rallies became ruinous. Maybe he knew that talking about death, he kind of saved a part of himself. But, without doubt, something of his real self must have died, because ancient philosophy taught us, that objectified meanings lose their actuality in consciousness, right? Maybe talking in front of his followers, Jesus freed himself of his very own obsessions? Yes, it became his therapy, right? Goethe did it with the young Werther, exorcising his personal demon. If Jesus would have been a wise man, he would have lived an empty and sterile life, a life free from contradiction and despair. Nevertheless, his irreconcilable contradictions forged, and made it richer and more creative, right? Mary Magdalen looks onto Yehuda, in an Heideggerian way, almost in need to learn to embrace the absence of the divine. For, when we do, we can come to think of “Gods” in a radically post-Christian sense, as historically transformative truths events that we encounter when we learn to discern the outlines of something where others have seen nothing. This way we creatively disclose new worlds of meaning, right? It seems we need new Gods, after all, right? So why are we substituting our religious God with Technology? Why don’t we keep it as it is, maybe in a ‘Trinity 2.0’ version, right? Crucifixes on our walls have already been replaced by posters of tech gurus anyway, right? Nietzsche taught us that by not having a God, we must take care of our very own life. This means not just on Sundays, but every minute, every hour, every day and so on. Not easy, right? For Heidegger, the death of God was more of a historical vacation of the divine. Maybe a few schizophrenics can do this in an asylum, under protective caring eyes. Not us, right? No, it’s not possible. This would put Kant’s solipsism to overdrive, right? Our collective subconscious is clearly missing the good old totem. Our 16th Century monks (tribute to the great ‘Tenebrists’ from Jusepe de Ribera, Francesco Fracanzano to Mattia Preti) are still fighting with their doubt about the trinity, while the Vatican Guards are aimlessly trying to protect the good old grounds around St Peter. The ultimate God is not the end, but rather the other beginning in the immeasurable possibility of its history, right?
SHARE
