PHILIP BAREISS
BAREISS GALLERY

​Press Release

Metamorphosis

Saturday, December 29, 2018, 5–8 p.m.

Two Taos artists, Allan Packer and Norbert Voelkel, in
an exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and a short film,
address “metamorphosis” at the Bareiss Gallery in Taos.

The Gaia Consequence (metamorphosis of a snail) by Allan Packer is an installation of human exploration using cinematography, painting, drawings, models, and sculpture to chronicle the metamorphosis of a snail as a metaphor of our existence.

Based on the concept of Carl Sagan’s golden record, the work captures an abstract snapshot of human civilization by recording the story of the sea creature’s transformation. The installation is also informed by the Gaia hypothesis, the scientific assertion that earth’s environment is a self-regulating organism.

The “Morphs” are paintings by Norbert Voelkel; they deal with the human figure in two manifestations: undifferentiated ‘morphs’ that connect with the Rio Grande Indian mythology of emergence from the Sipapu—the place of emergence of first man and first woman—and emergence from the kivas. These amorphous archetypes are undifferentiated—or they have lost their individuality; although they are angel morphs, king morphs, transcending morphs . . . their predicament is that they have not yet been transformed. They are contrasted with ‘persons’ representing the human condition in our times, including the Puppeteer, the Seer, the Syrian Pieta, and the Pixelman.

Together, the two artists address three questions. What does it mean to be human? How does one become a person? What is the fate of the earth in the cosmos?

Art is cognitive. The role of the artist is to make visible, be a seer and to invent new signs- new signs and symbols [symballein, Greek, to throw together] bubbling up from consciousness and the unconscious are thrown together to form a world.

Allan Packer
Norbert Voelkel