So much of our life is spent in orderly configurations. Queues at the grocery store, intakes and outtakes at the airport, the doctors office, getting on the train. What art, what beauty, in the maze is possible? Some have used the beauty of order to further fascist ideologies, to further the pain of domination and expulsion. Some rely on order to ease fears, to console that someone, at least, is nominally in charge. The meditative qualities of labyrinths are so treasured that they appear in hospitals, chapels, and even some schools. There is some sort of lie at the end of all of these orderly machinations—we live in chaos, wild unpredictability. What would we do, what would we become, if we could break the wheel of chaos, and build a new order of our own fiendish desires?
Scott Eakins’s The Magpie Dilemma is scheduled to be on view until March 21 at Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta. Please call ahead to confirm viewings.
