installation view in the Totem:ný verk exhibition at Galeri EinnEinn, Reykjavík, Iceland, March 1991

Begun in 1988, the Apocalyptic Dream is a cycle of 21 triptychs containing three sub-cycles. The first sub-cycle -- with a center image of the torso of Apollo in a museum in Kassel, Germany -- explores aspects of material and physical existence; the second centered around a phrenological image of the head -- explores the various fruits of the intellect and Mind; and the third, signified by Light on an altar in a church in Bevagna, Italy, across the street from Claudia's grandmother's place -- Light is a direct revealing of the spiritual.

The original triptychs were about 1.5 meters wide and were installed as part of an exhibition in 1991 around the stone columns of the Aula Carolina, the church hall that Karlus Magnus (Charlemagne) built for his coronation in the 9th century in the town of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in western Germany. The work was then transformed into an installation at Galleri Einn Einn in 1992, and a small hand-made book the same year.

The Dream, Apokalypsis cum Figuris, originated in Sleep...

That is, the root of the experience lies in Dream-space-Dream-time. Dream is the vision experience of internal sight. Time selected a moment to manifest a visual beginning of the Dream. In the Dream three images from my past were psychically assembled in a particular configuration. I physically constructed a small icon with these images as constellated in the Dream. I did not understand it all, but I did understand that this beginning was to be called the Premonition of an Apocalyptic Dream. About six months later, two more triptych icons came together, entitled Normal Thoughts Immediately Preceding the Apocalyptic Dream. And then, Derivative of the Apocalyptic Dream. Following there was a year time of silence, broken finally by a series of four icons that were a rational response to the existence of this Apocalyptic Dream.

As a child I once was compelled to study the book of Revelations, the Apocalypse of John of Patmos for a number of years in catechism. I return to this historic root for the model of study alone. The actuality of the church experience was one of forced attention, forced action, and forced learning. All killing to the imagination and to the Spirit.

There needed to be some method by which I could approach the unReason of the Apocalyptic Dream. I wondered for half a year, when two more Dream Icons came to me. Then another year later, four additional Dream Icons manifested a physical presence. I did not understand their existence so well. I needed some system to understand, to meditate upon. The trinity offered a world-system of awareness. Carnal. Intellectual. Spiritual. Eros. Filios. Agape. The Apocalypse lies on the axes that connect these aspects of Being. The aspects move from reality to dream, and the dream becomes real through the system of intellectual development. The changes of each aspect involve a binary or dualistic evolution. The Dream is balanced through the action coming from dream-seeing. Midway between each aspect is a synergetic axis giving the range of the dreams looking. The change of aspects involve some brief darkness. The Dream is of some future, it is not based in hope, for hope is a mistrust in the clear foresight of ones mind.

The dream exists in a space of faith of communion and communication.

The apocalypse is not an oracle of destruction. That is a profane, secular reduction of the etymology of the word. The study of eschatology, or of the last things has as an important subset, the study of the apocalyptic. The word eschaton refers to the ultimate edge or boundary. The word apocalypse can be broken into apo (from, away from) and kalupsis (covering, the (bridal) veil covering the eyes). The apocalypse then becomes an action of unveiling, uncovering the edge, the transformative border of existence. The border being the perceptive surfaces of the Eye. Revolution looks at the apocalypse as personal and global means of bringing the present state into the future state. Historically, the conditions of these two states are present (bad, corrupt, oppressive) and future (blissful, perfect, evil-less). Nuclear weapons are not apocalyptic, they are the epitome of the present corrupt thematically-based ideologic state. Their use will not precipitate this kind of transformation.

The Apocalypse becomes an action of vision, a force of see-ing. Removing the veil at the edge of the present, the now, involves first the perception of the psychic locus of that edge. The locus of the edge falls at the perimeter of body (which is a portion of the Soul) as defined by the five senses. Subsequent there must come a revelatory vision, a deeper vision that transcends the border of present and future. Moments of pure perception, full, unmitigated, and unmediated awareness -- the use of all the chief inlets to the Soul -- have the character of this vision (it is a Dream, a real Dream), although the mind is seldom aware of these moments. Dreams are also the internal exercise of the five senses, leading the spirit into a future. Life is the surfacing of the spirit into the carnal.

The edge of the five senses, that is, the body, becomes the portrait. The human portrait, as revealed in the silver salts. I make portraits as an action; the images are the residue in time of the action. The moments of complete perception, paired with these bodies become the apocalyptic vision. For the spirit, the triptych becomes the mast upon which are hung the sails of realness, the icons of action that navigate the world.

The numbers seven and three are important -- important to the realization of the idea. The Trinity of Body, Mind, and Spirit. The seven Natures of the human being. The four earthly and the three heavenly.

in the gradual unveiling of vision: an ikonic directive -- not post-nuclear vision -- present-vision. curvilinear time, cyclic yet evolving (double-helix DNA perceptions embedded in action dialectic interrogation Synthesis!).