Toro
Works in Jan’s Totems series present icons, objects, and scenes as metaphors for reflection on current events and themes relevant to contemporary living.
Toro, appropriated from a screen-grab of a matador-and-bull in Spain, is a meditation on the virtue of gracefully out-maneuvering aggressors, liars, and self-dealing manipulators in one’s life.
“When one is faced with an aggressor intent on taking advantage, it is important to be able to 'out-maneuver' the bull until, exhausted, it collapses under its own weight.’
Though the form of the bull is somewhat melancholy and incomplete, since the helpless beast here is an innocent, and the bloodsport of bull-fighting is brutal and cruel, the metaphor holds true.
vibachrome print on raw aluminum
92cm x 118cm x 3cm
executed in 2019
edition 2 of 3 🔴