Into the Singularity: (showing 5 panels)
Acrylic, Ink, and Collage on Canvas

Tom Block

Mystical realization is defined by the denial and even denigration of the experience of self. Mysticism holds that personal emotion, attachment and sensual, human love are all the mark of ignorance, and tether us to the "human;" while mystical attainment, which attempts to deny the "I" and move to some airy region where personality is diaphanous and emotion untouchable, somehow leads us towards God's ultimate purpose. Frankly put, this is wrong.
After all, if the universe bequeathed us anything, it certainly gave us our tendencies. If we believe that it is our ultimate purpose to outrun these tendencies through a kind of mystical repression, this seems fallacious and illogical. This universe has created us in a certain manner and, as such, it is through our very human quirks and five sense that we can most clearly come in contact with the universe that birthed us. The desire to turn tail and hide beneath some absurd cloak of non-action is just a deeper form of human ignorance.

"Into the Singularity" is a large 24 panel painting - measuring 6' X 72' - that expresses that seething singularity that percolates beneath the calm, repressed interior experience of the realized mystic. Fusing color, a morass of hands, screaming faces and dribbling tears of line, this work explores the horrifying interior space created by the mystic's path. It is an empty, narcissistic and rudderless journey, leading only into a cul-de-sac of a human experience. Painted in 2006, "Into the Singularity" is 24 panels made of acrylic, ink and collage on canvas.

Tom Block is an artist, writer and theoretician best known for his work that delves into the soul of our post-modern search for spiritual meaning in this post-religious era. Block has looked for the intersection between secular times and our spiritual nature in various series of art/writing projects including his Shalom/Salaam Project, Human Rights Painting Project, Cousins Public Art Project, Response to Machiavelli Project and, most recently, his work In the Garden of the Mystical Redoubt.