In his Allegory of the Cave, the philosopher Plato conveys a metaphor in which a person living in a cave might see shadows on the wall and think them to be the whole of reality. The allegory points out the human capacity for delusion. In this installation, when a viewer stood inside of the gallery, the wooden structure appeared as a cliff face with a cave-like entrance.  During this exhibition the artist continually lifted a set of bronze dumbbells, seeking a state of mental transcendence through physical exhaustion.

above: Artifacts from On Shadows and Realities, 2008, approximately 4”x4”x12” each, bronze, steel, and paint.

When a viewer stood outside of the gallery, and looked in through its storefront window, they could see that the cave was very much a construct. The artist lived in the cave during the days leading up to the exhibition, and was on view for the public as a living example of a person seeking to drag himself “up a steep and rugged ascent” to exit the metaphorical cave of delusion.

The artist would periodically stop lifting the dumbbells to read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to a parrot. Reading to the parrot was on one hand a metaphor for the limitations of human understanding, and it was also an experiment in passing Plato’s existential musings on to another conscious creature.