For more than three decades, Jon Eiseman has developed a complex private mythology centered on a search for meaning in the borderland between rationality and the subconscious. Masterfully cast in bronze, solitary figures embark on strange voyages through liminal landscapes, as if distilled directly from a dream or the the inner undulations of the subconscious.
In his latest exhibition Eiseman presents a series of dreamscapes in bronze, each exploring the human psyche with all its frailty, desires and longing for spiritual connection.
"I am depicting a world that can only be reached through our dreams and subconscious, one that is disconcerting and troubling but also contains its own poetry and beauty. It does not conform to the rules of the rational world. The labyrinth, in a spiritual context can be described as a metaphor for how one journeys through life, towards the centre of one's own soul or consciousness. It can represent a pathway with its twists and turns, hopes and disappointments which ends at the very core of one's self. As we live our lives we all explore our own personal labyrinths."
Artist Statement 2023
EXPLORING THE LABYRINTH Catalogue essay by Elli Walsh, 2023 We drift towards a hazy horizon in the work of Jon Eiseman, forever journeying and never arriving. As if siphoned directly from a dream, the Melbourne artist’s masterful bronze sculptures see anonymous pilgrims traversing forests and oceans by foot or on inadequate vessels. Their voyages are purposeful, and yet these travellers appear lost, lonely, displaced – a poetic metaphor for human life indeed.
‘Exploring the Labyrinth’ continues Eiseman’s fascination with the frailties of the human condition in the psychological melting pot of the modern world. Visualising our endless quest for meaning, Eiseman’s persistent iconography of bird masks, suitcases, backpacks, nests and boats expose different iterations of the finite self-striving against the continuum of existence. In these surreal compositions, implied landscapes are barren and bereft, yet somehow full of promise. Derelict bridges and objects stacked against gravity hint at the salience of balance in a world where equilibrium and equality oftentimes feel out of reach. Eiseman’s travellers, here, court the edge of collapse and yet the enduring power of the bronze medium – both historically, and in the formal sense – assures us that these fellows are steadfast and strong.
These bronzes straddle the fringes of rationality whilst plunging into the misty depths of the subconscious. For Eiseman, the creative process – the physical making of each wax composition – is a portal into an elusive internal cosmos, wherein ideas and imaginings cascade like falling stars. “Sometimes it feels like tapping into a something, a place distinct from the normal processes of rational thought”, he reflects, “Some artists even say it is outside of ourselves, like tapping into a part of the ether.” Much like the process of using a mantra for practitioners of meditation, central to Eiseman’s artmaking is listening to music, which distracts his cognition and allows a creative dimension to flourish. Permeable, then, to forces, fantasies and fictions beyond rational thought, his mind “becomes free to wander between the two and operates on a subconscious level”. To capture these scintillating scenes, Eiseman creates quick sketches – bookmarks of chapters in his never-ending narrative to be materialised later in bronze.
Eyes closed, faces contented, bodies pressed close, Eiseman’s mystical personae embrace in an endless waltz. In his new dancing works, we see companionship as a core value in current times – something, certainly, cemented by the pandemic. The move slowly, intimately, as if nothing else exists. Is it lamentation or celebration that brings these men together? Mirror images of each other, they speak also of the importance of fellowship with oneself; of acceptance, love, and empathy.
Guided by spirit birds, Eiseman’s figures sail into oblivion on a subconscious sea of spiritual longing. They, like us, are always searching but never arrive. Sticks and logs foraged from unseen forests point to purpose; the primal potential for creation, and yet equally it seems that these are the gnarled, broken dreams of eternal wanderers. Futility here mingles with meaning, and new hope sprouts in the metaphoric form of seedlings. The future of mankind flickers before us in vignettes both indiscernible and unknowable, but we continue to push ourselves forward through the labyrinth.
ARTIST BIO:Jon Eiseman has been a practicing artist since 1985, receiving a Bachelor of Arts Honours [Fine Arts] in 1998 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2000, both from Monash University. He worked in the sculpture department at Monash University for twelve years and after leaving continued with his personal practice to the present day. During this period he has had many solo exhibitions and completed public and private commissions as well, including a major work in 2022. He has exhibited in the Lorne Sculpture Biennale, the McClelland Small Sculpture Fair, the McClelland Sculpture Survey Exhibition and has been a finalist in the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize, the Deakin University Small Sculpture Award and the Alice Art Prize.
Eiseman has completed several public, corporate and private commissions throughout Australia. His sculptural work features in the permanent collections of The Constable & Hershon Vineyard & Sculpture Garden, Hunter Valley, NSW, La Trobe University Collection, Parliament House, Hobart, Tasmania, Geelong Regional Gallery, Burnie Regional Gallery, the Point Leo Sculpture Park in Victoria, Whitehorse Art Collection and in private collections in New Zealand, USA, Asia and Europe.
