URBAN GEOMETRY - 42 x 56 Inches | Vladimir Kush

This painting is a representation of the model of the imaginary city of Cosmopolis, where the front plane is the Day (the conscious and collective actions) and the backside with its two planes represents the Night (the individual and subconsciousness).

The ray coming from “All seeing Eye of God” creates an illusion of the outside observation of the city, and it sets the gears of the World Clock in motion....

The tetrahedron maintains the same shape as the water molecule. Thus, this painting depicts the city, in which the main source of life is water, just as it is for the entirety of mankind.

Day (Collective daily actions / Conscious)

High above we see the Eye of Providence, watching the Cosmopolis City. It is the All-Seeing Eye of God. In mythological depictions it is often enclosed into a triangle and surrounded by rays of light and glory meant to represent divine providence where the Eye of God watches over humanity. This depiction appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States which is stamped on the dollar bill. The pyramid and the eye tell us about the social structure and the higher powers ruling the cosmopolis, where the All-Seeing Eye reads the writings of myths and legends in the gigantic books below.

Eclipse

This fantastic city is lit by the light of the sun, and we see it from the height of the bird’s flight. Early depictions of the universe showed the sun to be a symbolic center of Cosmos, an absolute.

Truth, according to Plato, is something sun-like as “in a light of truth”. Since the sunlight and its warmth are bestowed on every living thing in equal measure, the sun was regarded as the Cosmokrator - the ruler of the state of Cosmopolis.

The vertical ray coming out of the heavenly eye is piercing the space and created an illusion of the outside witness and watches over the city and its inhabitants.

Millenium Watchman

The ray of light determines the dynamics of City Life making the gears of the world clock turn. Climbing the ladder God oils the gears to enable the advance of time and alarm bell as God appears in different shapes and forms. He complains that he has to struggle with unyielding material. If we are intelligent and talented, we help God to create. In this case we feel that there is God in ourselves. According to the bible: What is a second to God is a Millenium to man.

Measure of Greatness

The pile of sand on the tip of the spade in the shape of the famous cathedral “Sagrada Familia” in Barcelona. This pile is about to collapse or crumble down in a moment, and only have this moment to appreciate this Masterpiece.

The frailty of everything beautiful is one of the paradigms of our time. But beauty never dies, it is transferred from one image to another, leaving its imprint in our hearts. The Sagrada Familia is 170 meters high, and it could also be a ship to heaven, or a connection between earth and sky, or the liaison to God.

Wood and Stone

The tree is always alone. Old age, lightning, or a woodcutter are its destiny. Only the calcified rock is eternal. Being inserted into the collapsed tree, the stone saves it from decay and collapse, and preserves the Masterpiece of architecture for us.

A Majestic pyramid preserves the mommy inside, the sculpture immortalizes the features of great people. The hourly rings on the painting preserve the time in their patterns.

During the travels through the Jungle of Bornes, the artist was impressed with the remains of old trees, resembling castles and cathedrals. They also had so called “counterforce roots” almost as if the tree’s yearly rings were unfolding into the architectural plans of the city.

B-Rain

We can notice the “collective mind” of the city in the gatherings of people carrying the cloud by threads. This cloud may be an expression of the God’s mind, and the people are the puppets of this mastermind.

B-rain = Brain. In the past people were praying for rain, considering the rain cloud as an expression of the God’s will. Chinese popular imagination associates the cloud with the Dragon of Rain, so desired by peasants. “Earth unites with Dragon” so, they speak in China about rain.

History of the House

The house – book takes the central part in the painting. The lines of the Book of Life are destinies of people reading them from the corresponding floors. Its lines and paragraphs are the stories of the whole generation.

The elasticity of the paper pages is juxtaposed by the hardness of the stone of the building. We can draw an analogy between the soft matter of human brain and the hard skull (software and hardware.) That human strong box holds the images of the past in its brain.

The house takes up only so much space in the city, but human imagination has no limits and translates the images of the past into the present.

Tuscan Nest

Behing in the streets we see the building with the red hard tile as the stork’s soft feathers. Folklore says that when the stork family builds their nest on or near the house, it brings peace, harmony, and happiness to the household.

The family is the cell of the city’s organism!

Planet Sunflower

Phenomenon of the Sunflower, growing sometimes from the cradles of the city’s pavement. Many seeds are unified on the sunflower disc, just as the planet unifies the destinies of many people living on it. As engraved on the quarter dollar US coins “E Pluribus Unum” – Many in One!

It is known that the sunflower is turning to the sun, tracing the way of the sun in the sky, just as the planets are rotating around the sun, due to gravitation.

Breach

One of the most important collective actions of the city inhabitants is the imitation of the nature elements, such as the ocean with the breaching whale. It is known that Eskimos used the skin of the whales as trampolines to look for whales. The same method of inversion used in a previous artwork by the artist “Captive Audience” is used here as an environmental action.

Ascent of the Spirit

Life is a book, and the past days are its written pages. The pages are the steps and stages of his spirit and self-cognition. On the edge of the turning page, we see the person flying into Cosmos. “At this point the main is parting with his earthly nature and his spirit gains the greatest freedom” (Immanuel Kant).

Night (Individual actions / subconsciousness)

Shine Always

The candle in this painting is the “light of reason” coming from someone in their good old years continuing to enlighten the younger generations. As a poet once said: “Shine all the time, forever shine, the last days”.

Captive Audience

The parrot in the cage obviously belons to both spaces of the observation tetrahedron – inside and outside.

The parrot’s ability to mimic human speech was often a symbol associated with the gift of prophecy. For example, in Christian religion a bird in contact with divine spheres – was the Dove of Annunciation delivering a long-awaited message.

Note also that the artist was also using the method of inversion in this part of the painting.

Voyeur

Gazing in the keyhole is an indication of the objective outlook at the city and its life. The voyeur sets out to provide one of the links in the love symbolism of the ‘key-lock’ sequence – the artifact of visualizing a love affair.

Sword of Hamlet

“To be or not to be?” is the question Hamlet asks in self-reflection. The answer is like a sudden light of truth piercing the darkness of uncertainty, and as ruthless as the sharp blade of a sword. Time to act and fight back against evil!

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Hamlet learns from the ghost of his father of an outrage committed within the family circle.