Between such differences in cultural rhythms, Theodore insists on leaving ample alone time for himself, for his creation. He says that the everyday world often cares about many things “not so much”, but quite the opposite in the world of art, “any small change makes the work completely different, everything matters”. Because of this, he spends most of his time with himself, and in this focused stillness, he allows the imagination to unfold freely, to generate images and situations, and to construct stories.
This is also clearly reflected in another exhibition “The Possibility of Meeting Again” that he is currently holding at the Kutlesa Gallery in New York, in which he constructs a “journey”: there are four sculptures from the “Endless Night” series, each pointing in four directions: east, south, west and north. Inspiration stems from the way the ancient Greeks discerned directions — they often judged their orientation by looking at the texture, shape, and orientation of cliffs along the coast or in the mountains, as the rock formations of each cliff were structured and lighted differently, thus forming natural “landmarks”. So these four pieces are all different in the way they shape their texture, as if responding to this ancient approach to orientation with their own textures.
However, it is not difficult to see from this way of story construction that Theodore is not actually obsessed with narrative in the traditional sense, but is more concerned with the “translation” of imagination, experience and emotion. And in the picture, the main medium that carries these is “landscape”, which he believes “our language, ideas, and existence itself, are shaped by the landscape”. However, the landscape he refers to is not a mountain forest, river or specific landform that can be clearly positioned in art history, but a landscape experience that is closer to a sense of timelessness: it does not belong to the past, nor to the future, nor even clear time and space coordinates.
He often removes the horizon and skyline from the picture, leaving the visual without a point of reference, and it is for this reason that his works often take on a highly subtle temperament. He too was indeed drawn to this subtlety, wishing the work “to speak in its own way” rather than being dominated by a strong authorship: “I tried to join in an intellect a kind of intelligence that goes beyond me.”
It is also why he wishes to create works that he does not fully understand — those pictures that can break away from self-experience and remain open-minded. Arguably, he is always trying to capture a nuance “intermediate state” that lies between binary oppositions and transform those indescribable feelings into visual form.
