Infinite Regress CLXXXV (Variation I)

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Miranda Lash describes the stakes of Eamon Ore-Giron’s extended body of work titled “Infinite Regress” this way: “Throughout much of the last century, the emergence of abstraction in the United States has largely been regarded as an innovation that emerged from twentieth-century modernism and related movements such as Abstract Expressionism. Ore-Giron’s paintings trouble this narrative by incorporating modernist elements as well as pre-Columbian sources and more contemporary references to indigenous culture, thereby significantly extending and expanding the timeline, geographies, and people associated with forms of abstraction and artistic creativity in North and South America.” To put this another way, the works embody what curator Marcela Guerrero refers to as “the sound and color of mestizo synesthesia.” The series began in 2015, evolving out of prior paintings in which the artist had combined European-style geometric abstraction with semi-representational references to Aztec, Incan, and other Pre-Columbian cultures, as well as references to Latin American modernist movements such as Neo Concretism. These works often featured raw linen canvas (which provides a departure from Western high art formality, a sense of earthy materiality, and a suggestion of brown skin), and gold flashe paint (which connotes desert landscapes as well as the history of gold in pre-Columbian traditions, especially funerary ceremonies that became more important to the artist following the death of his mother in 2015). Energetically zig-zagging and parallel lines from this period also seem connected to Ore-Giron’s work as a musician through suggestions of rhythm, musical notation, or components of instruments. Out of this mixture, the 2014 painting Cut the Sun initiated the “Infinite Regress” series with a central axis of stacked orbs and vanishing points that suggest multiple suns and multiple horizons. The series title relates in part to these vanishing points, and Lash adds further interpretation: “The concept of infinite regress refers to a sequence of reasoning that has no end, or a puzzle that turns infinitely back on itself,” and the series portrays “boundless space and the elasticity of time,” both in an abstract or metaphysical sense, and in the sense of histories intricately and confusingly intertwined. The author continues, noting some of the clearest visual associations in the work: “The recurring forms in this series have been described as celestial, recalling the movement of constellations or the course of the sun… This comparison to the heavens resonates with Ore-Giron’s interest in pre-Columbian architecture, as many of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca temples calibrated their scale and orientation according to the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.” There is also the potential for infinite continuity in the series itself, in which every painting is inspired by its predecessors. Some paintings in the series are just eight inches tall, while others are as much as fifteen feet across. Ultimately, the DJ concept of the remix seems readily applicable to Ore-Giron’s visual art, as he recombines both historical sources and elements from his own work over and again. The artist himself has explained that he approaches his art at a nexus of influence: “I believe in the sacred, especially when it comes to indigenous culture, given the history of exploitation and appropriation… I understand the need to protect things, but I also feel as if that protection can kill it.” Ore-Giron thus reinvigorates all of his source material by using it, keeping it alive and moving, and recombining it: “Not in a sense of sacredness as in preserving it, but more of making it fit my life. In that way, it’s applying a DJ mentality.” In this light, Ore-Giron’s turn to other media in works like 'Infinite Regress CLXXXV (Variation I)' is a natural step in the series’ ongoing remixing. The work’s title helps clarify the artist’s creative process, as Ore-Giron uses the term “Variations” for collaborative works based on a original paintings. The original painting, with its numerated title, is often used as a sketch to be translated into the new material. To date, he has made works of this kind in tapestry, ceramic tile, and glass mosaics, choosing material translations and color palettes that recreate his imagery and imbue it with a rich history of craft. As such, the artist is glad to work very closely with artisan fabricators in these processes, and he has always worked with craft studios in Mexico. For Infinite Regress CLXXXV (Variation I) he collaborated with Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Founded around 1949 at the height of the Mexican muralist movement as the first mosaic factory in the Americas, this is the same fabricator Ore-Giron worked with for his major public mosaic project for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico has focused primarily on cut glass mosaics (also known as smalti) since its inception, helping make Mexico a world center for the technique.