Current Art Show

The End is Nigh 

The eternal present and the eminence of the eschaton in medieval Christendom show a conception of time that is more spatial. Although the events of one’s life may go on in eternity, time exists as a whole. And in the last days we will all find ourselves resurrected in the flesh. The medieval subject did not view itself as a historical actor, rather as one participating in a cyclical pattern reinforced by social practices such as the medieval caste system.  There was a disruption in this time sense with the invention of printmaking, which allowed for the rapid dissemination of information,  as well as massive historical changes which gave rise to a modern perception of time as linear. We now imagine ourselves as historical actors creating the future. However, this individualism and Promethean era may be coming to an end because, like the advent of printing, we now live in an era which has rapidly developed a new means of disseminating information. Social media, in which we become products, we sell our own individuality but construct identities from the past, constantly recycling the imagery and movements of the 20th century in which we are trapped. We are caught in a Promethean project that failed to take hold, arresting the development of history, as Francis Fukuyama famously declared in the title of his book, “The End of History.” So we see ourselves returning to a cyclical time where years and decades repeat themselves as trends that emerge, bloom and submerge amongst different groups year after year. God in the eternal has been killed. Ideas of teleology have been lost. We did not build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant lands, but instead we now dwell in the nihilistic eternity of our own eschaton without salvation.