Artwork from the Neurophilosophy Series included in this literary journal from the University of Dundee, Scotland. “A magazine dedicated to the arts, sciences and humanities”
Description: “The Second Horseman Rode a Red Horse”.
The New Testament Book of Revelation is full of dramatic and mystical visions. Chapter six describes allegorical figures associated with conquest, war, famine, and death. It is famously the subject of a 1498 woodcut, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Albrecht Duerer.
This work, made of cheese wax, riffs on that chapter with a depiction of the second horseman. In some interpretations, this figure represents civil war. The humble materials and small scale ironically ridicule the power and terror described in the vision. But underlying that is a genuine fear about current US politics.
Revelation 6 (New International Version)
3 When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword.
This imagery suggests both the microstructure of cells and the macro-structure of galaxies. Individual entities, or people for that matter, constantly in motion, bump up against each other. Sometimes their interaction is simply a “sliding by,” hardly noticeable, and sometimes there is a joining that transforms by the effect of influence, combination, or even transformation. This could be interpreted in the physical sense, for example, applied to meteoroids that travel, collide and break or burn up. This process can be applied to interpret human interaction, as people travel along many orbits and sometimes a slight change in force or direction yields an encounter that changes both parties, causing new connections.
The H&R Block Artspace at the KCAI is pleased to present the 2023 Kansas City Flatfile & Digitalfile, featuring artwork by over 250 regional emerging and established visual artists.