An Aetheric Collection Celebrities and Icons

AN AETHERIC COLLECTION
CELEBRITIES AND ICONS?
PREFACE
Artists can see the world differently, exploring territories that go beyond our
sensible experiences. We have seen this during the course of the history
of art with artists delving into perception, playing with the conscious and the
unconscious, over layering space and time dimensions. Informed by
history of art, esotericism, science and spiritualism, Degard uses the potential
of art to bring a wider audience to engage with confidence to those
questions of life that seem to stay unanswered in many fields, but not all.
What stretches and goes beyond perception, the infinity of the unknown
defines our limitations as human. Visions and “other” experiences have always
been discussed and studied in all cultures and traditions. What is it that
make us strive for something “more”? Is t/here (such a thing as) the divine?
or is it an explanation of the awe-inspiring/inspiration we seek?
Being in conversation with academics and scientists, the artist has promoted
in March 2017 “The First Symposium on the Aetheric Movement” at the Royal
Society of Arts, London. Degard and other leading thinkers have explored
vital questions leading to ‘Aethericising the Curriculum’– a profound
conversation on the potential loss of both imagination, inspiration, sublime
experience in our academic curricula today. Degard initially experimented
with method and form for 15 years before arriving at her signature work
shown here. Degard has elaborated a contemporary aesthetic language
and vocabulary to re-interpret traditional forms of depiction, with portraiture
and iconography, bringing forward the alternative possible methodologies
to investigate exteroception and interoception.
Benedetta d’Ettorre, curator, Royal College of Art, 2017