1. The Magic of Alchemy - 2. Fire and Ice - 3. Motley Spaces - 4 Rethinking Origins - 5. The Process - 6. The Play of the Abstract - 7. Greenland -
8. Christine's Visual Journal - sketches - 9. Christine's visual Journal Photos - home
transforming alchemy's - The Process of Transformation - Reality and Illusion
christinealfery@christinealfery.com
The idea of alchemy has been around for a long time, my use of it has been influenced by Professor Thomas Popkewitz - University of Wisconsin-Madison. As he states in his paper "The Alchemy of The Mathematics Curriculum, the use of "the notion of alchemy" is "a strategy" that "considers the rules and standards of reason. Alchemy, according to Professor Popkewitz "seeks to transform ... cultural practices into pedagogical practices." The power of this web site and this exhibition seeks to take this notion of alchemy and illustrate how it transforms the elements of the surreal, illusion and the imagination into the realities of the visual. I think of both states, the surreal and the real, as created. The notion of alchemy when thought of as Popkewitz suggests as a strategy is the historical process by which one is able to apply or even think of a strategies that formed rules and standards of reason. I take the position that the transforming alchemy's of transformation, the aesthetic of the process, the strategies that are able to be used, lie in the creation of form and not in the end materialized concrete product.
Because this exhibition. The Magic of Alchemy" is a working, in process site, and exists in "virtual reality" it hopes to create a dynamic space that questions the divisions that have been created when art and it's associated aesthetics is essentialized - works through desperate notions of what is 'real' and 'illusion.' This site questions disparate notions of illusion and the real and suggests that. because all things are in perpetual motion it is in the space of transformation that the aesthetics of art and art forms exist. Christine Alfery