Zhivago Duncan

Mapping out unification.
curated by Lawrence Rinder.
January 30, 2023

Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Charles Baudelaire, Correspondences

Over the past couple of decades, it has become fashionable to refer to our period of geological time with the term Anthropocene. Underlying this nomenclature is the idea that, for better or worse, nature has ceased to exist independently from the influence of humanity. As timely and insightful as this conception may seem, it is nonetheless a rather parochial notion of reality. From a more cosmic perspective—at the scale of our solar system or the entire universe—the trials and tribulations of nature and humanity are of no more consequence than a case of mild, passing indigestion. Also missed by the anthropocenic mindset is the possibility of emergent conditions existing amongst and within the various aspects of humanity and nature. What if we are not nature’s antagonists at all, but part and parcel of a singular phenomenon of consciousness, a vast, inter-species egregore? 

This is the key question posed by the art of Zhivago Duncan. His paintings and sculptures provide visionary glimpses of a reality that may seem hidden, yet which is everywhere to see. It is the story of the most ancient cosmic occurrences and at the same time a slice through the spellbinding, incomprehensible now. Touching lightly on religion, language, landscape, biology, emotion, and cognition, Duncan’s art encompasses a human experience that is enmeshed within a magical matrix of time, matter, and energy. 

Central to Duncan’s methodology is the expression of mystical correspondences between cosmic history and the birth of life, the evolution of consciousness, and the structure of myth. He posits that our patterns of feeling and knowing echo the bursting, coalescing, expanding, and contracting cycles of universal creation. For him, looking outward to the stars is analogous to looking inward, to the very essence of our identity and the real. His Eye of Hope series (2021-23), for example, asks why it is that rays of sun through parted clouds not only universally elicit feelings of euphoria but even inspire intimations of the divine. (There is more than passing resemblance between Duncan’s Eye of Hope compositions and Titian’s description of heaven in St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, c. 1547.) It is as if we share a primal recognition of the first cosmic burst of energy from which we all emerged. Duncan’s repetition of this motif in the Eye of Hope series is less an allusion to Monet’s impressionist approximations of light on haystacks and cathedral walls than it is the kind of repetition that transforms an image into an icon, like Fontana’s slashed canvases or Albers’ homages to the square.

Duncan’s Psycholytic Consciousness, (2021-22), presents a mandala-like pattern which simultaneously evokes a neural connection, the big bang, and a solar flare. Overlaid against a sky-blue background, the pattern itself is covered by another image, like the grimacing face of a Chinese guardian lion, comprised of billowing, purple-outlined clouds. This imagery is echoed in another painting, Egregore, (2020-22), in which the faces multiply into a grid of leering apparitions. In this work, the radiant lines read more explicitly as rays of sun piercing through parting clouds. On top of the cloud-faces is a diagram, drawn in tinted wax, of an otherworldly machine that appears to be pumping and channeling fluids through a variety of tubes and orifices. We find this range of iconography, absent the guardian lions, incised into a large black ceramic vessel (Gigantomachy, 2022-23). The unusual shape of this dark form—bulging at the center to create an angular ovoid—infuses these images with a sensation of expansion even as their black color suggests collapse and withdrawal. A grand vascular machine appears as well in Civilization, 2021. Here, instead of cloud-faces, the artist presents a grid of hieroglyphic symbols alluding to the emergence of language from the underlying patterns of existence. 

In these works, Duncan points to neural networks connecting parts of the brain as well as pathways of affect and information that transcend material circuits to create emergent fields of consciousness linking person to person in communities of perception (i.e., the “egregore”). His interest in collective consciousness goes beyond humanity to encompass the vast cohort of earthly life. In seeking insight into the nature of this shared awareness, Duncan looks toward its origin and evolution. The focal point of this exploration is the so called Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), a term coined by biologists in the 1990s to denote the vital substance from which all earthly life derives. Duncan symbolizes LUCA with a pattern of scales, alluding to the lingering presence of antecedent features, such as reptilian scales, in the human body, i.e., in the form of hair and nails. Less literally, the scales stand in for an organism the precise nature of which remains unknown an object of much speculation. One theory holds that LUCA was a cellular being that lived near the mouths of hot vents on the ocean floor. This notion may account for the presence in some of Duncan’s paintings—particularly the ones incorporating scales-- of tubes that appear to rise from an obscure ground, emitting streams of energy into murky space. 

Duncan’s metal tablets capture some of the same imagery as his ceramics and paintings. A double-sided metal piece presents, on the front, an abstract composition suggestive of turbulent weather in the manner of a Constable study of the sky. The back shows a cubic version of a vascular machine along with a lopsided leering cloud-face. Presented at the top of a stepped pyramid, the piece is endowed with sacred allure. The invitation to commune raises the stakes of this work, recalling the time when art was not merely a commodity or decoration but a means to access higher powers, gain a greater sense of ourselves, and connect to the community of being. 

Lawrence Rinder
Berkeley, 2023