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A R T I S T S T A T E M E N T / B I O G R A P H Y
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Program>>
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RAM Gallery
20th anniversary-exhibition
November 19th 2009 - February 14th 2010
An Automatic Smile
Vernissage Thusday November 26th at 7pm
by Thomas McQuillan
Wednesday November 18, 2009 / Tuesday December 27, 2005 / Friday August 10, 2001
This is a Smile that I made for myself, and then after I had made it and looked at it for several weeks I decided I wanted it to be for Simone Weil. It wasn't so much that she was in my thoughts when making it as that her views seemed to give it so much more clear a meaning. The Smile was what it was from the instant I hung it on the wall. But it's meaning changed when I decided to give it to Simone.
She was a French activist, a writer, but above all a person of strong personal religion. Her work seeks to resolve the clear sighted world of physics and the transparency of mathematics with the translucent otherworldliness of spirituality. For her, the central discipline of grace was the key to overcoming, surpassing the inevitability of universal gravitation. Gravity acts. Whatever falls surrenders to baseness-- but grace is the levity of spiritual awareness that lightens this charge all the while it swims upwardly against it. The implacable drive of gravity informs grace with its buoyant swell.
Simone struggled with the flesh, with her flesh, with the person that she was. She struggled with the equipment of herself. She adopted the living conditions of those least fortunate and modeled her body after theirs. She died from this discipline. Against the darkness of her fate and the steely resolve of her convictions, I wanted to show her the lightness with her work and life-- a lightness perhaps she could not herself see. By giving her the Smile, I was giving her a present of herself.
The Smile accepts Simone's spiritual physics, but prefigures a happier outcome. The Smile is a limpid expression of pure gravity, supported by two buoyant points, producing a curve that is always, irreversibly, Smiling. Sometime I have thought to myself that I wish that the Smile was a better work-- that it was more elegant, or striking, or revealing. Sometimes I have simply wished I could make something as good as the Smile, some other new and different expression of hope. But this is the best I can do. It is my best work, for whatever it is worth.
Humans bear within themselves a particular intelligence that is personal. It is the intelligence that allows them to chose words without using words, of knowing how to move towards the light. And for knowing what is true. Humans can always recognize whether a smile is real or not, because they can read in the shape of the face so many subtle and delicate features of that simple act. A person can always see an authentic smile.
Biography
Thomas McQuillan received his degree in Architecture at The Cooper Union (1991) and his Ph.D. from The Oslo School of Architecture (2006). He writes and practices architecture in Oslo.
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