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    Series Cascades
    Reflections on the emerging of the Series Cascades

    Malraux supposedly said in the mid-twentieth century that the 21st century will be spiritual or won't be. Now living in Cartesian France this statement of an agnostic writer and minister of culture intrigued me to the point that I started a whole study on the probable meaning of Malraux's statement. Soon some of the key ideas were: metamorphosis and transformation. Many well known writers have questioned and expressed their thoughts on these key concepts.

    While searching theoretically I was equally searching pictorially. I soon came to the conclusion that the horizontal represented this earth with all that we visibly and tacitly and audible capture. On this purely visible/physical level we might have made some discoveries during the last century; but on the vertical- non-historical, non-progressive level we seem on hold, made little effort to uncover its realm. Choosing a vertical format, mostly of a larger size, I engage in seizing a ascending and descending movement through transparent veils of one tonal hue. The movement should be equally ascending and descending, giving the impression of an eternal metamorphosis- a process that seems to unfold continuously. An instantly up and downward movement. While producing this body of work, I was offered a book entitled "André Malraux et la Cascade de Nachi". In this book Malraux's Japanese translator reports how Malraux has had his 'illumination' while standing in front of this famous waterfall. To my great astonishment and delight Malraux states that the Cascade as a physical entity - water - is in a descending movement, but as an image it ascends to the sky. Therefore it has as much an ascending as descending quality and produces an instant metamorphosis. I therefore entitled the painting I was working on "Cascade de Nachi" and the series 'Cascades' as an homage to the loop that had been created between the beginning of the my search with Malraux' statement "Le 21ieme siècle sera spirituel ou ne sera pas", my pictorial work of an instantly ascending and descending movement and Malraux's final experience in Kyoto.

    Tulum January 2002, Revised and updated August 2004 Bernkastel-Kues.