Burning Man is an event held annually in the western United States at Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace.
Burning Man's art installation "Head Maze" (by: Matthew Schultz and The Pier) is a purposeful juxtapositions of two forms, a peaceful meditative reflection and our inevitable struggle with the nature of cognition; a monolithic mind caught in time between multiple selves. The head towers four stories over the playa floor, encased in mulberry paper and epoxy modeled after the work of Yoshio Ikezaki. The head rests in repose while its left hand claws at its mind fighting to reveal a crystalline stained glass structure akin to the “Space Whale” inside. A series of hidden doors in the mouth, wrists and head open into a four story, 18 room maze. Each modular room creates a unique space dedicated to the nature of our minds, our struggles with being and the weird and fanciful process of dreaming.
Talking Heads (Oleg Lobykin) is an abstract sculpture, a spatial composition based on a balance between negative and positive space in conjunction with a line that can create an image or point of reference to spark imagination. This is a work of imagination, inviting the engagement of curiosity with creativity. The viewer can experience a multiplicity of meanings, depending on what goes on inside their own heads. Some may prefer looking at an object, while others like looking through the object. Maybe everyone lives in different realities. Talking Heads can show the power of imagination to lead us into a metaphysical and magical experience of metamorphosis.
