Melancholy and Other Pursuits
Melancholy and Other Pursuits is a body of work created during a month-long thematic residency at the Banff Art Center, Banff, Canada. The thematic residency, entitled: Something in the Water; A Search for a Turn of the Backwash, was international in scope, collaborative in nature, and lead by British Artist, Adam Chodzko.
Melancholy and Other Pursuits was inspired by the curious formal resemblance of the monolithic barriers of Wall Street and the sculpture adjacent to Zucotti Park (locus of Occupy Wall Street) in NYC with Albrecht Durer’s philosopher’s stone in his 1514 engraving, Melencolia I. In the engraving, the philosopher is beset with melancholy while pondering the philosopher’s stone, which is thought to hold the alchemical key to converting lead into gold.
