Opening March 6, 2006 at the Toho Gallery in Tokyo is "The Dark Forest" by Reinhardt Sobye. Works shown in this exhibition are drawings on computerprints (monotypes) all with a theme of a dark vision of the contempary world situation and how the human race are tearing itself apart in agony and violent frenzy. "This is going to be a difficult essay to write. Some themes and assertions will due to their verbosity just disintegrate and lose precision and logical drive. I hope some compensation through sketches nevertheless will contribute in making sense."

The Dark Forest
By Reinhardt Sobye

I have travelled so deep into the "Dark Forest" that I have lost contact, so to speak, with the written language. I am developing my works of visual art to make statements regarding the human predicament.

When the last eyewitnesses to for instances Auschwitz or Hiroshima dies and vanish from our contemporary time, their stories will gradually ! fade away, become retold and distorted. After a while they will be transformed to icons and their authentic experiences with heaven and hell will be objects for relativity.

When I work with portraits or (as manifested by this exhibition) digitally construct stage settings for one or more persons, I introduce a necessary condition for understanding; emphaty. When the human face disappear and all you have is a sheer reconstruction through archives, documents and renarrations...an all important source for human acknowledgment will no longer assist you...the complex ability to see, to read another human beings face (the development of our proportionally large cortex is related to this very ability).

We will never be able to preserve, reproduce and comprehend human experiences from the past without colouring...tainting it with our present assumptions. We even cannot accomplish this regarding our own, present time.

To me t! he figurative , expressive artwork represents a main road to a truthf ul propulsion of the "decently human conversation ". A conversation between a core in a fragmented , chaotic , but still omniscient soul and (if it is true art) a charged picture. Maybe art never can aspire to be more than a meeting , a recognition between our deepest shared archetypical layers. A mirroring message too complex for rendering through words and thus beyond language.

It is far more difficult and awkward " to lie " inside the figurative expression than inside the non-figurative- , conceptual- or performance linked art. Poorly developed and applied techniques jump towards your eyes and any flaws in the message will not so easily be covered beneath a smokescreen of post modernistic theory and adjuration.This I consider self evident: One of the main purposes of contemporary art is to lie, distort and confuse...There is always a political agenda connected to your financial sources. This is part of the cultural bar! rage which stifle and paralysis the ability for independent thinking. Which is an supposition for systematic manipulation. As bring me forth at : Definition at independence.

Quentin Skinner make use of the American revolution in 1776 as a comparing example. Why did the founding fathers chose the specific words "declaration of independence " for postulating national sovereignty ? Certainly , because they was belonging to a republican tradition which exactly conceived freedom synonymous to independence. Today's American political philosophy – for instance by the liberal John Rawls – operates with a absolutely different and a good deal poorer definition of freedom , according to Skinner. The contemporary liberalistic philosophy says : Freedom is absence of coercion ; you're free as long you are not compelled. But under the American revolution they said: Absolutely no , absolutely no , you can't feel free unless you are autonomous. You're ! only free if the possibility for accidental restraints on your rights are eliminated. And that is certainly quite a different and much more demanding notion of what it means to be a free citizen , say Skinner.

"...I'm struck by the degree in which we have given up this the idea about freedom in our contemporary democracy. We have donated the government an exceeding power which would have been perceived as tyranny from an alternative definition of freedom. In the contemporary world of today freedom is defined as unrestrained individualism , escapism, narcissism, exhibitionism and freedom to consume. This " freedom " is based on eternal adolescence , external beauty, sex - appeal, conformity, idolization , contempt for weakness , diseases , old age... In short ; you are "free" as long you have a minimum of market value. This " freedom " is fascistoid and shall eventually reshape any individual to a victim. It is only a matter of time. It is inevitable. In spite of this everybody between th! e age of 10 to 25 are recruited to join the globally psychosis ; How to be the selected one, the anointed? The cultural web becomes torn apart under the weight of this hunt for the holy gral, this ferocious search for a fundamental lie, i.e that human beings do not need other people. This decomposes the collective liability and nurture "The Black Forest ", making it bigger and more dangerously. At the same time we are preyed upon by forces beyond our own control.

Everybody are tormented by this massive lack of independence. The entire world has become a large game of poker. We are being told...repeatedly (it's the mantra of our time) that eventually we all will be transformed into american middelclass. Technology and streamlined world management will no doubt save the day, they say.

All the evidence tell another story. We would need 7-8 planets Earth to use for our benefit for this "dream" to happen. We have but one and it is in exceedingly bad! condition. If there still will be enough future left to teach history I believe our children will be convinced that one mans wealth always are the poverty of others.

"Get Rich!" is Mammons declaration of war on mankind. One of few lights in this darkness can be read in a possible decisive change among the conservative christianity in USA :

Polluters will have to answer to God, not just government, says Richard Cizik. Vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Cizik is a pro-Bush Bible-brandishing reverend zealously opposed to abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem-cell research. He is also on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to the cause of conservation, using a right-to-life framework. Cizik has been crisscrossing the United States in recent months, spreading the doctrine of "creation care" to evangelical Christians.

The world will change by two causes. Either (most probable cause) through a catastrophe self inflicted by the human race or... mankind decides to submit the the ethics that are engraved in our souls.

Art must decide for itself which side to support.

THEY

"They talk like barren deserts, think like poisoned water, and their emotions are like another suicidal charge of infantry, Verdun 1917. They touch each others with barbed wire and steal with tenderness the future belonging to their children. They are dangerous...to themselves...to everybody."

NOVEMBER COLD

God is a little boy
in the shadow of november cold
silence   -   not a sound
an angel called innocence
whispered your name
as you thumbled to the ground

Reinhardt Soebye has been a Premiere Portfolio Artist at absolutearts.com since 2000. View more of his work at: http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/r/reinhardtsoebye/

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