Smoky day, Burj Khalifa

Smoky day, Burj Khalifa 2023 graphite on travertine, 12 x 12 inches. Private collection

The bleak and the beautiful
Architecture perhaps represents the most gigantic act of man on earth. Repeatedly, the magnitudes in planning are associated with the representation of a mental formation, such as relative value of money or properties, documents, notes, which ultimately end up characterized as symbols, often in a binary ethereal context. Likewise, the material vulnerability of these structures has been put into play in the era of terrorism and geopolitical wars. Also based on digital powers, omnipresent, from the space; no area of the planet is exempt from catastrophe today. A Beeple Crap’s fiction, no longer shocks the adolescents of our time, who are more acquainted to watching live, the spectacle of obliterated cities or the missile camera before crashing into its target. This quasi-nocturnal vision, of the majestic Burj Khalifa in Dubai, surrounded by an ethereal panorama of clouds, mushroom explosions and an almighty light show, recalls an aesthetic to which we are already habituated. That instant of severe solemnity, on the verge of the bleak and the beautiful, in the midst of dark smoke and emergency signals. An instant to meditate on presence, experience perplexity and let go of adrenaline.

-Glexis Novoa