MARA DE LUCA
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“Who, if I cried out, might hear me – among the ranked Angels?
Even if One suddenly clasped me to his heart
I would die of the force of his being. For Beauty is only
the infant of scarcely endurable Terror, and we
are amazed when it casually spares us.
Every Angel is terrible.
And so I check myself, choke back my summoning
black cry. Who’ll help us then? Not Angels,
not Mankind; and the nosing beasts soon scent
how insecurely we’re housed in this signposted World.
And yet a tree might grow for us upon some hill
for us to see and see again each day. Perhaps
we have yesterday’s streets. Perhaps we keep
the pampered loyalty of some old habit
which loved its life with us – and stayed, never left us.
But, oh, the nights – those nights when the infinite wind
eats at our faces! Who is immune to the night, to Night,
every-subtle, deceiving? Hardest of all to the lonely,
Night, is she gentler to lovers? Oh, but they only
Use one another as cover, to hide what awaits them.”
Excerpt, Duino Elegies, The First Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Gosia Wojas:
Requiem for Sublime
"How were we first persuaded to perform
our every act as though it were our last?
As one might halt upon the last high ground,
which shows him his own valley one last time,
and turn; and linger; and hang back…
… so we dwell here, forever taking leave" (Rilke 69, lines 14-19)
"…[De Luca] addresses existential questions through an art historical lens, drawing upon various painting conventions: she reinvents the techniques of late modernist painters, recreates the minimal atmospheric effects of the California Light and Space movement and simulates nature's Romantic sky setting. The underlying current that runs through these diverse art styles is one of transcendental experience. As Newman, Friedrich and Turner did, so does Turrell believe in the magnitude of spiritual content in the art they produced. For De Luca, Abstraction, Minimalism and Romanticism as referenced in "Elegy II.III" are tools used to mine the history of painting's rich visual language, to reaffirm the longstanding notion of art as an instrument to transcend chaos and to re-define its place in a contemporary and undeniably digital landscape…"