Poiesis - Art, Science and Religion

The word “poiesis” is ancient Greek and, perhaps contrary to expectations, does not mean “poetry”. Rather, in my interpretation of it, poiesis means “internal creative act”. The collection of works in these two years are all, of course, a product of poiesis, but more specifically, the word refers to the title of a triptych of works (Poiesis I, II and III) also subtitled "Art, Science and Religion", created after various compositions of Max Reger. One can write almost infinitely many pages dedicated to just one of these words: art, which is connected with beauty; science, which is connected with knowledge; and religion, which is connected with virtue – but what these areas of human spiritual endeavour are now, what they can be, and their relation to Poiesis, I will leave as yet another mystery for the viewer to consider in contemplation.

Besides the music of Max Reger used in the aforementioned triptych, I used several of Sergey Prokofiev's works to create two of my paintings on somewhat different themes: the well-known Hebrew Overture and various almost-unknown piano works in "The Chess Player" (2014); and the grand, yet in many ways subdued, Symphonies 4 and 7 – Prokofiev's last – in "Following the Star" (2015).

The word “poiesis” is ancient Greek and, perhaps contrary to expectations, does not mean “poetry”. Rather, in my interpretation of it, poiesis means “internal creative act”. The collection of works in these two years are all, of course, a product of poiesis, but more specifically, the word refers to the title of a triptych of works (Poiesis I, II and III) also subtitled "Art, Science and Religion", created after various compositions of Max Reger. One can write almost infinitely many pages dedicated to just one of these words: art, which is connected with beauty; science, which is connected with knowledge; and religion, which is connected with virtue – but what these areas of human spiritual endeavour are now, what they can be, and their relation to Poiesis, I will leave as yet another mystery for the viewer to consider in contemplation.

Besides the music of Max Reger used ... read more