"The reference to classicism or to art history-is persistent in Kounellis' work and indicates a breadth of meaning that our contemporary existence must be at the point of rediscovering...." Arte Povera (Art from Italy) p125
I was looking for a bridge into what might be loosely termed conceptuaism in order to locate my ownefforts and found it to an uncanny degree in Janis Kounellis. I had already spent several months closely examining Anselm Kiefer and had long been an admirer of Beuys so I was aware that there was the possibility for conceptualism to 'carry weight' in the same way that Rothko sought to load his paintings with the tragic heroic. It is this ability 'to carry weight' which attracted me to Kounellis and Arte Povera.I was already along this road with my own work: 'Psalms' shown above was my first attempt at taking objects and loading them with a mythical significance. I had been for sometime thinking about how to depict the transcendent and hit upon gold and silver reflectivity for the obvious connection with divinity in Christian spirituality. I first wrapped a tree one winters day and was amazed to see many people attracted by the glowing dance as a winter sun played upon the swaying tree thus transforming it into a contemporary burning bush. I was treading unwittingly the same path as Kounellis in trying to link the everyday to the deeper significance. I repeated the work on a much larger scale the next summer in a month long installation called Homage. One could also pursue a discussion on the 'poor' nature of the materrials I have used-foil and glass gems in my work.
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