Bass Wood, Plywood, paint, rice
72″ x 21″ x 43″
This work is one possible rendering of Ganda, the living rhinoceros that was the Lisbon Rhinoceros of Durer’s famous print. Posed in his last breath on the sinking ship and yet not fully rendered. He is gold like an idol with a horn resembling a tool. He is a beast of burden, the burden of description or the anchor of the ship. The work gestures to a false or undefined idol, Durer never saw this animal with his own eyes and yetmade the print that forever defined it. His body is a hollow shape with apertures on either end that the viewer can look through. It is both a body and a monument that is neither erected nor fallen. The bags of rice that the body sits on are employed as ballast. The banal elements of empirical trade routes fueled by the spice trade and the quest for land, this imported element grounds the piece both literally and metaphorically.