The infected touching antiquity Do you feel divinity when you touch antiquity? Metamodernist art by JJFBbennett Stand before a marble relic, and you find yourself at the threshold of contact. The museum enforces detachment. Do you feel the decay and contamination your hands carry? But what happens when your flesh touches ancient stone? To reach out is an act of somatic friction. Our mortal residue, sebaceous oils and living warmth, ruptures the sterile illusion of the untainted idol. We drag the pristine monument down into the mess of human mortality. Yet, the instinct to touch is an innate longing for connection. Laying bare skin against ancient form collapses millennia, sparking a euphoric link to what came before. Touch restores, renews, and opens an otherworldly portal beyond everyday perception. Touching antiquity infects its distant divinity with our decay, but in that very transgression, it bridges the void—granting the seeker genuine transport into transcendent awe. Marks...
It was breathtaking to see the sun rise over Story Bridge. Yet, I couldn't help but be buried in my thoughts as I walked through the deserted alleyways. My soul was burdened by depression and anxiety, and the suggestions of others simply made things worse.
I had the impression that I was stuck pushing a wheelbarrow full of emotional baggage. My own concerns and doubts were causing me to delay and postpone my aspirations. Bouts of procrastination and hopelessness prevented me from realising my full potential. So I identified with every cause that offered relief because I felt like an important person.
But then I came across a motivational transcript without a title that promised to guide me towards inner tranquillity and contentment. Instead, I experienced a change in myself as I read the lines. My mental fog started to lift, and I began to perceive the world differently.
I walked through the busy streets. The life and vitality of the city hummed all around me. Once overpowering and disorganised, the flashing lights now made me feel awestruck and amazed. The writing made the world's splendour and majesty more apparent. I experienced a sense of tranquillity and pleasure that I had never experienced before as I gazed out over the city skyline with its tall towers and busy flashing lights.
The world was now a place of promise and beauty rather than fear and dread. It seemed as though I had come out of my own personal hell, where the writing of an unidentified influencer had significant meaning. However, now that I had discovered a route out, I could embrace the light and leave the darkness behind.
I realised at that precise time that the speech had given me a second chance to face my worries and uncertainties and appreciate the world's beauty. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it signalled the start of a brand-new day full of prospects and chances for growth and development.
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When Atoms Reach for Sacred Altars What do you feel when you touch something sacred? Do you want to touch sacred art? Are we creatures bound by thermodynamics, driven by an instinctual urge to exchange heat, shed skin cells, and mingle our matter with the monuments we revere? To stand before a sacred masterpiece is to experience a gravitational pull—an irresistible desire to collapse the space between subject and object, to leave an oily fingerprint as proof of shared existence. The gallery border is a social construct attempting to enforce absolute vacuum, forbidding the inevitable entropy of human connection. To reach out anyway is to assert that our physical reality is not separate from the sublime, but bound to it by the very matter we carry on our fingertips. Reaching across that barrier is a quiet rebellion against social decorum: a desperate want for quantum entanglement that collapses the boundary between ideal beauty and our messy, lived reality. Be Creative a...
WHAT CAN MAKE UP FOR LACK OF TALENT Does art derive its validity from the skill of the creator's hand, or from the cultural scaffolding that forces our conscious spotlight onto the object? This gallery space has thrown down a direct challenge. Dominating the centre wall, glowing in bright white neon above the shattered glass and the Campbell's Soup Can, is a raw, uncomfortable question: "WHAT CAN MAKE UP FOR LACK OF TALENT?" This neon sign acts as the ultimate cognitive mirror, forcing us to reconcile the two extremes hanging on either side of the gallery. The Postmodern Answer: Frame and Hype Look at the soup can sitting in the spotlight. Postmodernism, driven by Andy Warhol and Pop Art, gave a cynical, revolutionary answer to this neon question: Context, branding, and institutional framing make up for a lack of talent. Postmodernism declared that you don't need the masterly brushwork of the Renaissance or the sublime emotional intensity of Mark Rothko. An art...
The Metamodern Smudge: Seeing Growth on the Frame My use of the phrase "Fingerprint on the frame" functions as a metamodernist artifact. From my perspective, metamodernism oscillates between modernist sincerity and postmodern irony, and this concept sits precisely at that intersection. It recognises that the artwork within the frame is a construction, while also valuing the human touch that created it. More than just recognition, it is the fundamental identifier. In this space, the smudge is not just an artistic signature; it is a map of personal growth. It reveals the traces of our experiences and the impact of our interactions with the world around us. The transparency of glass symbolises the invisible cultural conditions that shape our perspectives, allowing us to see through to the complex realities that influence our creativity and expression. This interplay creates a deeper understanding of both the art and the artist, acknowledging that every mark left behind tells ...
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