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Lot Essay
Geraldine Javier has been critically lauded as a female painter of startling talent within Southeast Asia. Lucid, evocative and deeply referential to the pillars of humanity, Javier's beautifully wrought canvases capture fleeting moments and the essence of intangible things. Her narratives dwell on liminal realms, such as her definitive work Ella amo' apasionadamente y fue correspondida (For she loved fiercely, and she is well-loved) (Christie's Hong Kong May 2010, Lot 1154) which shows feminist Mexican painter Frida Kahlo asleep and dreaming in the stasis of a midnight garden.
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was exhibited in Javier's iconic 2011 show, "In the BeginningK". This exhibition expanded on Javier's series of works with trees as the central objects, featuring compositions such as The Crucifixion (Christie's Hong Kong, November 2013, Lot 423) and a four paneled narrative, Good vs Evil. Through this motif, Javier explores her fascination with the natural world and its inhabitants, and represents the form of the tree, either flourishing or barren, as the landscape for existential binaries: good and evil, or life and death.
As the exhibition title infers, Javier's curatorial delves into the concept of cyclical existence; the alpha and omega of universal phenomena since the start of time. This particular work, Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Lot 65) is a reference to the Biblical tree from which Eve ate the apple and caused humanity's fall from Eden. Within Christian tradition, the Tree of Knowledge was thus the catalyst for the cyclical nature of human love, joy, suffering, desire, and death. In Judaism, eating of its fruit represented the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before then, the two were separate, and evil was only represented by nebulous potential, a cold-be rather than a definite presence. Therefore the Tree, in Javier's conceptualization, is a Pandora's Box, an inevitable fuse to the flame of human life.
By drawing on the universal archetype of the tree - the cross, the gibbet, even Beckett's symbolic tree at psychological crossroads - Javier participates in a larger narrative discourse resonating across history, literature and religion. Javier's use of the tree is associated with Yggdrasil, the primeval world tree of life within Nordic mythology. Odin, the Norse god of battle, victory, magic and death sacrificed himself to hang from Yggdrasil for nine days and nights in exchange for wisdom to rule Valhalla. The idea of the world tree as Odin's gallows gives birth to the medieval trope of the Hanged Man within the tarot deck, a liminal figure who hangs suspended by his ankle between this world and the next.
Javier suffuses the tree with a visceral quality, as it sprawls and dominates her tightly cropped landscape. The stark isolation of a single inanimate object suggests a tableau-like fixity, an almost theatrically dramatic sense of being the centre of all things. Gnarled and heavily barked, it portrays an enduring impression of great age, wisdom, and totality. At its base is nestled a bird of hawk-like aspect, yet bearing a clutch of snow white feathers. The visual paradox between the embroidered bird with a splash of scarlet, and the shadowy natural hues of the Javier's tree symbolizes the endless dance between destruction and rebirth.
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was exhibited in Javier's iconic 2011 show, "In the BeginningK". This exhibition expanded on Javier's series of works with trees as the central objects, featuring compositions such as The Crucifixion (Christie's Hong Kong, November 2013, Lot 423) and a four paneled narrative, Good vs Evil. Through this motif, Javier explores her fascination with the natural world and its inhabitants, and represents the form of the tree, either flourishing or barren, as the landscape for existential binaries: good and evil, or life and death.
As the exhibition title infers, Javier's curatorial delves into the concept of cyclical existence; the alpha and omega of universal phenomena since the start of time. This particular work, Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Lot 65) is a reference to the Biblical tree from which Eve ate the apple and caused humanity's fall from Eden. Within Christian tradition, the Tree of Knowledge was thus the catalyst for the cyclical nature of human love, joy, suffering, desire, and death. In Judaism, eating of its fruit represented the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before then, the two were separate, and evil was only represented by nebulous potential, a cold-be rather than a definite presence. Therefore the Tree, in Javier's conceptualization, is a Pandora's Box, an inevitable fuse to the flame of human life.
By drawing on the universal archetype of the tree - the cross, the gibbet, even Beckett's symbolic tree at psychological crossroads - Javier participates in a larger narrative discourse resonating across history, literature and religion. Javier's use of the tree is associated with Yggdrasil, the primeval world tree of life within Nordic mythology. Odin, the Norse god of battle, victory, magic and death sacrificed himself to hang from Yggdrasil for nine days and nights in exchange for wisdom to rule Valhalla. The idea of the world tree as Odin's gallows gives birth to the medieval trope of the Hanged Man within the tarot deck, a liminal figure who hangs suspended by his ankle between this world and the next.
Javier suffuses the tree with a visceral quality, as it sprawls and dominates her tightly cropped landscape. The stark isolation of a single inanimate object suggests a tableau-like fixity, an almost theatrically dramatic sense of being the centre of all things. Gnarled and heavily barked, it portrays an enduring impression of great age, wisdom, and totality. At its base is nestled a bird of hawk-like aspect, yet bearing a clutch of snow white feathers. The visual paradox between the embroidered bird with a splash of scarlet, and the shadowy natural hues of the Javier's tree symbolizes the endless dance between destruction and rebirth.