Robert Langenegger

I wanted to take the title of the show literally and let it deviate from there to lead me towards the show’s concept of how I have evolved. Firstly I would like to elaborate on my thought process which involved coming up with something that cannot be found on the internet while paradoxically googling information about the remarkable Chukchi people who depend on caribou for survival. Consequently the caribou is held in high esteem by these nomadic herders to the point of having selected animals deemed as sacred based on certain traits they exhibit. In the painting one will see an ancient tradition unknown to the outside world where a child that is old enough to have seen at least two summers is encouraged to castrate a consecrated caribou using only his incisors thus creating a sacred bond with the animal. This ceremony is overseen by a shaman who doses the caribou with an ample amount of Amanita muscaria mushroom to induce stupor. I now come full circle and conclude that my evolution is to live vicariously through my child. Gone are the dreams, fantasies and aspirations of my past self as I now disseminate my lifeblood into my progeny for him to blaze his own path in this struggling world I brought him into.