HOMUNCULUS, or Little Man

A new work just completed-- HOMUNCULUS, measuring 8 by 8 inches, drawn in ink, scanned and colored digitally. Some of the details surrounding the origin of the homunculus, or little man, as culled from various alchemical and folkloric texts, have been collapsed here into a single presentation, however there are several different recorded variations on how to grow a homunculus. It is truly the original test-tube baby, although attempting to raise one is sure to carry its own unique burden as the fate of its maker is inevitably determined by the betrayal of the homunculus.

Comic Box

In 2004, I constructed a piece that could be described as sequential art in a box-- a wall-mounted comic box. With the overreaching title Stompin' at the Bughouse with the Bugaboo Blues (Being a Broken Home Parable in Three Parts), Part the First: In Which the Child Receives Fear, Refuses Fear and Denies Fear, it was an attempt to continue making the sort of small, intricate drawings I was engaged with, but to find an alternate method of displaying them. I had a desire to reconsider the use of the frame and involve it more directly in what it was framing, for it to become an actual component of the content rather than simply displaying the content. Around this time, I was also unsuccessfully experimenting with placing double-sided prints into specimen jars, so as to remove the frame from the wall entirely but retain it as a distancing mechanism.


I have maintained a love affair with Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), since first viewing it at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2002. Among the complex set of reactions that I have had to the work, both reasoned and unreasoned, was a very simple appreciation of the optical fabric of the piece. It is a work that is at once a drawing and a painting as well as sculpture, occupying a zone that is simultaneously flat and dimensional. For me, a certain joy occurs in the constant need to relocate one's attention in response to the problem that arises in the work's transparency-- the simple fact that it is composed primarily of glass and therefore introduces a world of exterraneous information in the form of other viewers and indeed other works of art, orbiting at all times within its gallery setting. Duchamp dares his audience to readjust their relationship to how they look at art by undermining any possibility of fixed attention. Indeed, this is no idée fixe, as both the meaning and the perception of the work remain in flux.


Although I have never aspired to tackle such goals as those achieved by the likes of Duchamp, I had hoped to raise some minor viewing obstacles in the small scale realm of Bughouse. In the beginning there was a narrative in the form of an outline. There was to be three sections that described the childhood, adulthood and old age of a male character that was a cross between an insect and a human. In these three stages, his life was to be played out on a literal stage, with a proscenium of red curtains that described the shape of a house-- this was to be a domestic drama. A mini-narrative was then drawn up for each of the three ages, in which the bug-man matures through the accumulation of knowledge, which in his case is quite a painful process. Intersperced throughout this narrative of bug-man's life, is a kind of sub-narrative that I called Object Lessons. The Object Lessons, were comprised of objects seen within a suitcase. The objects themselves were broken into two categories: those used for survival by defense, and those used for survival by offense, although the two categories become intentionally interchangeable, as an object used for defensive purposes, such as a knife, could easily be used for offensive purposes. These confused lessons were therefore a kind of accompaniment to the bug-man's journey of violent self-discovery.


The box element was constructed to further complicate things. To throw off the viewer's perception of the narrative and, if they were willing, to invite them to piece a story together from the fragments provided. The images that comprised the narrative-- both the bug-man episodes, and the Object Lessons, were installed in the box, on opposite sides of one another, recto and verso, sandwiched within little black houses arranged in rows and tiers. The only way to view these images, was by pressing close to the box and peering either into a peephole the exact size of a penny, through which a beam of light would illuminate only a portion of the scene, or by angling the gaze through the side of a house-- revealing the entire scene. In either case, the revelation of the entire narrative in a single pass, was not to be achieved easily. The frustration of seeing was an integral part of the story. There were little secrets to be had within these black houses.


Unfortunately, I do not believe the narrative was formed well enough to reward such intensive scrutiny. The tone of the story was awkwardly realized and therefore inconsistent with the framing device, and the images were sometimes more confusing that revelatory. The hope to reveal something shocking in highly concentrated, controlled doses, in the visualization of bug-man's abusive and incestuous upbringing and subsequent forays into double homicide and cannibalism, was entirely lost and ultimately unneccesary. However, I do believe that the form of the work now requires re-examination, and having recently dismantled it, stands to be re-imagined for a fresh attempt.

Images: Ryan Standfest- Bughouse label, ink and shellac on paper in brass nameplate holder; Bughouse, box construction detail 1; Bughouse, box construction, recto view; Bughouse- bug-man narrative, ink on shaped bristol card; Bughouse- Object Lessons, ink on shaped bristol card; Bughouse, box construction, details 2 through 5, all 2004, total dimensions 12 x 12 x 2.5 in.