New Paintings by Tim Wicks
November 2014
in the City Center Art Lounge
300 Page Street, San Francisco
Reception: Friday, November 7, 7 – 9 pm
Combustion #3 (gold leaf, shellac, acrylic on wood, 2014)
Artist’s Statement:
Tim Wicks
It is possible the ship isn’t sinking. Hopefully that’s the case. Yet even the most casual glance at our experience in the world now and its relationship to science and industrial growth, with all its wonders and devastation, make a positive outlook a challenge at the least. Even so, I meet the fire this time with paintings of water.
Gold, which travelled here on meteorites, is thought to have sunk towards the planet’s core in the Earth’s youth, the result of the precious metal’s density. Our hubris proved power enough to pry plenty to the surface. With deepest grief, and your forgiveness I hope, I have put some thin slices of the conquering, bloodshed and tears to use here.
Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artifact we create. The making of a fish-hook…or production of a television program all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night…
—W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
Tim Wicks has painted and shown his work in San Francisco for twenty five years.
