'The Sigil drawings of Elijah Burgher are colored drawings that follow a template for magical signification originated by early Twentieth-century occultist Austin Osman Spare. In these drawings, Burgher arranges the letters of a phrase, which encapsulates his wish or desire, into an aesthetic abstraction. Arrived at intuitively, the sigils reference abstract painting—as well as that mode of production’s transcendent aspirations—while not adopting abstraction’s pomposity. Burgher’s sigils are a clever, playful interrogation of artwork’s capacity to materialize and encapsulate our hopes.' -- Jeff Ward, exhibition essay for PEREGRINEPROGRAM
'Elijah Burgher knits together queer culture and witchcraft/ sorcery/ the occult with soft, muted drawings of nude men preparing spaces for and performing intimate (though not overly sexual) rituals ... There are many of points of connection in the queer/ occult relationship, from the in the social deviant role given to both by mainstream culture, to insider signs and signals, to the fearful potentials of private physical rituals in the minds of the uninitiated or ignorant. While that alone would be enough to carry the work, Burgher’s goes farther and escapes the limits of this pure analogy through a somewhat fantastic discussion of intimacy as functional ritual, designed both to mark and bond participants while honoring an idea or changing reality into a more desirable form.' -- Chicago Art Review
Interview
from Butt Magazine
EB: If you look up sigil in the dictionary it will say something to the effect of ‘an emblem which has magic powers’. If you know anything about chaos magic, it’s pretty strongly associated with this 20th century occultist, Austin Osman Share. He would spell out his wish or desire and then he would remember repeating letters and then combine the leftover letters into a symbol of some sort. He thought the extreme method for casting them was to visualize them during orgasm so he would just masturbate while starring at his sigils. It’s jerking off to an abstraction. And the idea being was that you would blast it into the universe where it takes feet and blossoms.
When was he inventing the sigils?
EB: He was roughly contemporary with Aleister Crowley so kind of early 20th century.
What are the symbols and how do they work together? Or does it kill them to reveal them?
EB: After you condense the letters into a symbol, you’re technically supposed to forget what the meaning is and that’s part of putting it out there in the world. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing that. I usually think of a bunch of them and keep them in a folder until I forget what they mean and then draw them.
Do the signs become an alphabet?
EB: I like to think of them as being an alphabet of desires but the original meaning is lost. Some of it you remember.
(the entirety)
Show
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p.s. Hey. We're crazily busy here getting ready for the premiere tomorrow, and I guess anything interesting that's been or is going on will leak out below. So, onwards. ** Armando, Hey, man. Very interesting report on 'Imperial Bedrooms', which I still haven't managed to buy much less read. I feel more hopeful after reading your thoughts. Hm,I seem to be in the minority that thinks 'Lunar Park' is one of Bret's very best. Anyway, thanks a lot, Armando. Hope all's well with your work and on your end in general. ** Colin, Appreciating the positive vibes big time, my friend. ** Scunnard, Luckily for me, the theater we're working in is one of the few air-conditioned places here. Given that it's a gym with a tin roof, one would hope so. Anyway, I'm ducking and covering inside as often as possible. Bastille Day is coming up over here. I'll let you know its distinguishing features, if any. Oh, Blogger was acting weird yesterday. One time I checked the blog, and it said there were six comments, and when I opened the comments section, there were none. Later, it said there were zero comments, but there were seven. ** David Ehrenstein, I'll check the JGL stuff imminently, you bet, and thank you. ** Wolf, You're probably on your way, right? The nights here have cooled just the slightest bit, achieving quite a pleasant effect until one enters one's heat-retaining flat in the hopes of sleeping soundly. Can't wait to see you guys! ** Pisycaca, Hey! I was wondering if you knew and liked the band, of course. I think you did tell me you hate summer. Did I tell you I hate summer? Only about a million times, I'm sure. Oh, I had the most terrific phone conversation with Bradford Cox on Monday. I'd best hold off on the reason for the conversation for now, but he and I finally connected up, if not face to face yet. May the heat in our respective skies quit acting so fascistic! Love to you M, and to Xet too. ** Pilgarlic, I so seriously need to visit Tybee Island. Wow. Beautiful reverie it coaxed out of you there too, man. California's got nothing like that. My Dad used to live on Balboa Island, which is in Orange County, but it was only artistic if you're way into shopping for way too post-Impressionist seascape paintings. Phew, the police came and went yesterday. We squeaked past the fire code by the skin of our fog machines. ** Toniok, Hey, Thanks a lot again, man. You turned a bunch of folks on, me heavily included. ** Stan_cz, No, thank you for being you, man. I've known Mary since the very beginning of the 80s. At the time, she was concentrating on painting, and was showing her work in galleries a fair amount, so I met her via the LA art scene, basically. Sounds like Alan helped you out on the background check front. I honestly don't know anything about it. My jobs have been freelance all my life. ** Steevee, I'm thinking the Agnes B connection will get 'Trash Humpers' shown here, yeah, if in some single, high profile art event context at worst. I've been reading about the extreme hear in the Northeast, yikes. ** Killer Luka, To repeat what I've whined about here repeatedly, iced tea is my chilly drink of choice, and they don't even serve it in the fucking Starbucks over here. I'm mostly doing smoothies. I know only a little about those new Montreal bands. This and that, squib and wisp. It sounded pretty okay. ** Bollo, Dude, rain, what a sweet idea. Sigh. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, I get technically why Pattinson and Lautner are the heart throbs du jour via their lucky breaks on the 'Eclipse' front, and more power to 'em, but, I don't know, ugh. ** Chris, Hey. Oh, you must have written to me at Aol. Long story short, my Aol email account got fucked up over two months ago, andI haven't been able to open it and see any mail there ever since. Aol said they'd sent a mass email to my contacts directing people to my gmail address, but I only found out three days ago that they didn't, the fucks. Anyway, write to me here: dcooperweb @ gmail.com, and I'll get back to you straight away. Sorry for the screw up, man. ** L@rstonovich, Well, at least I'm not alone in heat-centric, hell, I guess. Sorry for us both. Cool about the show. Is it listenable in case I get the chance while here to be online for any amount of time? I saw there's a new Trumans water album coming out! ** Oscar B, Hey, buddy! Great news about the internet. Things are fine here, just, you know, stressful thanks to the ticking down of the clock. We haven't nailed the piece, and I doubt we will in time, but it's in good enough shape to see its first light, I think. Yeah, the premiere is tomorrow at 6 pm. Tonight's the 'general rehearsal' where elite big wigs are invited to get the first look. You're back in Paris at the weekend? Yury says the heat there is at a tolerable level at the moment. Yeah, I think when you get back, Michael and you should probably corner Chrystel and get our show a date if you don't mind, right? Love to you. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hm, yeah, it seems that thanks to Blogger's weird behavior yesterday, I didn't see your comment and others. Sorry for that. I'll go back and read it when I'm done here. That Tom Sawyer come-on works every time, darn it. I hope the ceiling doesn't need painting. Oh, you got 'Valerie and ...', cool. I've been scouting that out in my free time. And, you know, cool you got 'SiH' too, of course. I hope you, you know, like it. My day(s): Well, my last two days have been basically identical, so I'll just recount yesterday. Woke up too early in a sweating pile of myself. Tried to work on my novel for an hour or so, but it was too hot to think properly, so I think I probably just fucked the novel up more than helped it. Gave up, walked to the theater, said hi everybody, did the p.s. By its conclusion, everyone had gathered, so we got to work. We rehearsed the last three scenes because they're the roughest, or, rather, the transitions are the messiest remaining parts. There are these two long blackouts between the third to last and second to last scenes forced on us by having to move, in the first, the mannequins onto the stage and arrange them, and, in the second case, remove the mannequins and slip the real falcon onto its perch. So, we're trying to make the blackouts tolerable with music and fog and stuff. We'll see. The big fucking headache is the birds: falcon and owl. They simply will not do what they're supposed to do with any regularity. They're just supposed to enter, hang around for a minute, and then fly out/away, but they mostly don't. It's a big mess because the birds' appearance and Jonathan C's reaction is the end of the piece, and we should have fired the birds a month ago and devised a different ending, but it's too late now, so we're having to think up about twenty thousand alternate endings if the birds don't behave right, and poor Jonathan is a stressed out mess because he has no idea what's going to happen. Other than that big problem, the piece is in decent shape. So, doing that took all day. There was a ten minute break, and I walked around Avignon a bit. We finished up at 9 pm, and I watched the happy end of the Holland/Uruguay WC match at a bar, went back to my steamy little flat, and pooped out for the night. You're up, man. ** Sypha, Hey. Oh, yeah, Tarantino ended up being a much better filmmaker than I predicted in that piece. Funny that the Ryu Murakami piece made you want to read him. A subversive effect, I guess, ha ha. Gysin's influence huge and unimpeachable. His writing is a drag is all. ** Schlix, Hey, man. Oh, that's really good news about the basketball gig, right? It sounds beautiful to me. So, you'll be doing that and doing the other job as well? You'll be very busy, no? Thanks for the crossed fingers. Tomorrow's the day, yep. I'll let you know what the applause or boos or whatever indicate. ** Postitbreakup, Oh, I never heard that one before. LQtM, I mean. English is a cool, flexible language, for sure. 'That's shit' vs 'That's the shit', etc. English may not sound all that pretty, but it's multitalented. Awesome you applied for that residency. Good move, man, and all my fingers are crossed. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey! No, I seem to have been deprived of some comments yesterday, strange. I missed yours. I've heard of Umami Burger. Unless they do the veggie kind, it'll remain a legend to me. I'd like to see the 'Book of Blood' movie, yeah. 'The Books of Blood' is still my favorite Clive Barker, book-wise at least. I hope your boss starts paying attention to you pronto. Did you talk to her? How did it go, etc.? Take care, my Angeleno friend. ** Well, unless Blogger is playing tricks on me again, that's all of you. I'll go do my part in finishing up 'TIHYWD' as best I can now, and you guys visit my galerie and check out Elijah Burgher's work, if you would be so kind. Take care until tomorrow rolls around.
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