Just Another Day

Asemic Text

Contemplating Enlightenment (20 Tristichs for Meditation)

(Im)mortality

                                                                                            

These photographs are part of the "(Im)mortality" series which mainly deals with the “memento mori” theme. Photographs are typically used as a way of reliving the past and remembering the deceased. In a certain sense the photographic medium can be seen as a “weapon” against the ephemeral and the ever-constant flow of time. The act of taking a photograph may be immediate/instant (like pointing and shooting a gun) but its results are timeless. One could say that by photographically recording “reality” one acquires the ability to slow down time and “immortalize” a transient moment. In L’Acte Photographique  Phillipe Dubois suggests that the act of taking a photograph is “an instantaneous abduction of the object out of the world into another world, into another kind of time”.

The "Human Condition" series

Human Condition:

This series of photographic self-portraits is about existential anguish and alienation, and also an attempt to emphasize the human factor in a deadening commodified society. The nude body functions as a metaphor for truth and honesty; being naked (in a metaphoric sense) means that you are not hiding anything, that you are not pretending. The images hint that by facing isolation, darkness and negativity one can ultimately find light, spirituality, a purpose in life. As Soren Kierkegaard once said:

In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes-in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc., before one is sufficiently naked. [1]

This work can be seen as a reaction against the anti-values, nihilism, easy consumption and immorality that commodity culture has imposed on us. It is also a reaction against postmodern art/ theory and a way of restoring the importance of subjectivity and personal expression -which were undermined by movements such as poststructuralist postmodernism and theorists such as Roland Barthes who declared the “death of the author” [2]. This work should not be seen only as an aesthetic object and cultural artifice, but also as an expression of its author. Konmark believes that in this highly competitive and alienating society we live in there is a need to focus on the Individual, and therefore creates art which is of a highly personal nature-ultimately becoming transpersonal.

[1] Moire, E. C. (ed.) (2002) Provocations : Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard. Available at www.plough.com/ebooks/pdfs/Provocations.pdf

[2] Barthes, R. (1977) ‘The Death of the Author’ in Stephen Heath (trans. &ed.) Image-Music-Text. Fontana.

View the project at: http://konmark.com/gallery_47208.html 

UEL Prof Doc Fine Art Viva Exhibition

UEL Professional  Doctorate in Fine Art Viva Exhibition (Summer 2012)

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Liquid Emulsion

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

                                                       

A COLLECTION OF INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES ON TOPICS SUCH AS INDIVIDUALITY, SUFFERING, THE MEANING OF LIFE, THE NATURE OF MAN, MORTALITY, SPIRITUALITY, THE AFTERLIFE.

http://konmark.com/section262445.html

All Deaths (a sound experiment-tribute to Hermann Hesse)

All Deaths

I have already died all deaths,
And I am going to die all deaths again,
Die the death of the wood in the tree,
Die the stone death in the mountain,
Earth death in the sand,
Leaf death in the crackling summer grass
And the poor bloody human death.

I will be born again, flowers,
Tree and grass I will be born again,
Fish and deer, bird and butterfly,
And out of every form,
Longing will drag me up the stairways
To the last suffering,
Up to the suffering of men.

O quivered tensed bow,
When the raging fist of longing
Commands both poles of life
To bend to each other!
Yet often, and many times over,
You will hunt me down from death to birth
On the painful track of the creations,
The glorious track of the creations.

(Hermann Hesse)

Konmark

Konmark is an experimental photographer-mixed media artist-visual poet-independent researcher with an interest in themes such as memory, mortality, spirituality, the human condition, the exploration of the human psyche and the evolution of consciousness. He embraces the indexical qualities of photography and its immediate impact on the viewer, but what he is mainly concerned with are the ways “reality” can be transformed. By manipulating the photographic medium and/or combining it with other media he is able to develop a personal and simultaneously transpersonal language which negotiates between subjective art and the photographic document. He sees his work as a kind of weapon against the ephemeral or, as Vilém Flusser would say (Towards a Philosophy of Photography), a “hunt for new states of things”. Konmark has been exhibiting his art for many years (mainly in Greece and the UK) and his work has been featured in various books, journals and magazines. His university studies include a BA in Visual Communication Design, an MA in Photography and a Doctorate in Fine Art. He currently lives and works in Thessaloniki, Greece.