Odysseus
Ian Charles Lepine seeks to present beings trapped in a crossroads of contradiction: his interest is to display creatures whose very existence negates their very existence. These are beings at war with themselves, a war where all victories cannot but prove pyrrhic.
His sculptures are frequently complemented by a poem in either English, French, or Italian, that seeks to give a voice to its inert matter.
Author: Ian Charles Lepine
Year: 2022
Title: Homer/Odysseus
Technique: Ceramic clay sculpture, painted with oxides and enamel.
Homer is perhaps the greatest contribution to mythology ever created by the Greeks. In Antiquity his provenance was fought over by the most prominent of Greek cities as a cause of honour. Nothing is known of the man, but tradition has concocted a personality.
We don't know if Homer was real, but we know he was blind. How could he not be to have such in-sight into the human soul? In the land of the Phaeacians, Odysseus narrates the Odyssey: telling tales, retelling them is reliving them; language is action, literature, life.
This piece plays with Homer's blindness, but also his identification with Odysseus. Out of his in-sight comes the scene with the cyclops, but whether it is a vision, an inspiration, a memory, or a present event is impossible to tell.
Odysseus
The Gods assail us men to give us song;
They doom to suffering the human heart,
But through our woe we create celestial art,
And justify all evil and all wrong.
If Troy remained unlived, and Helen chaste,
If I had not the Sun-god’s offspring blinded,
And laid upon a wreck, betrayed, abandoned,
Upon my long-lost Ithaca replaced,
This song would not exist. This very verse,
Is graven deeply upon my every dream;
I close my eyes, and see the cyclops’ scream,
My song but justifies these bloody years.
The poets sing my tale, I live anew
A myriad horrors ever to renew.
–24 January MMXXIV
166Bis Rue de la Roquette, Paris