Marc Berghaus The first thing to be said about these pieces is that almost all of them appear in my mind, at random, and I just build them. The ideas pop into my head at odd times, usually in completed form, although nearly every piece goes through some form of change before its completion. My job, then, is to make what I have seen into an actual object. This consists of realizing the dimensions into wood and metal, and, if light or movement are involved, figuring out and building the necessary electronics and mechanics. I almost hesitate to call these ideas “mine”, because I don’t know exactly where they come from, and there is very little conscious design in the original ideas. They are the by-product, I believe, of prolonged spiritual questioning. Constant and intense questioning, through experiences and reading books, of religious and scientific assumptions of why things happen have caused my subconscious to gurgle and spit these things out. Anyway, that’s my guess. I do know that why, and how, things happen are what I am primarily concerned with. Cause and effect. Patterns and cycles, and chance and coincidence. The flow of events. The relationships, if any, between God, Nature, and Chance, or if they might even be the same thing. Or whether we might need to adjust our assumptions concerning any of these. Does mankind even have a special role in any of this? The role of randomness in how things happen- does anything ever, ever happen for a reason? The methodical approach I take in trying to answer these questions might, I think, be the reason for the somewhat rigidly structured and highly organized sculptures that appear to me, though I can’t be sure. Precision and organization are necessary for me to be able to focus on such vague and seemingly ungraspable subjects. To me, each one is a specific essay on some portion of these topics that interest me. They might not provide any answers for me, but they do always help to articulate the questions. While these pieces have always been about humanity’s relationships to these ideas--through rituals, quests, pilgrimages, scientific analysis, containment, capture, and use--they have also been small commentaries on the human race’s inability to reach these goals. While I know the impossibility and futility of say, constructing one’s own functioning sky out of metal, light, motors, and gears, I can’t help but want to attempt it. (And why would we need another sky, anyway?) This endless cycle of drive, attempt, failure, drive, is one of the things that most fascinates me about people in general. Ultimate understanding is impossible, and yet we keep trying. I have always found it noble, tragic, and comic at the same time. Anyway, as I said, I just build ‘em. |
