REX HAUSMANN

The New Ephesus is the world we find with the people we are with, in the place we find it.

This is The New Ephesus, a series of works that goes into The History of Rome as seen in New York City. Transposing ancient history with a living city.... among a city that literally froze in time, or as was referred to in a book "the city that simply ceased to exist". Ephesus, being the ancient city where the library of Ephesus was.... and New York City being a city center of the world. I say "city center" not "The City Center" for there are only "centers" now (plural), not a "center".

I'm starting the series in "Myths"... but these are "New Myths"... what if Romulus didn't kill Remus? In the founding of Rome... what if cultures mixed with Myths, 

The tiger you see jumping out of the water is another story, or "Myth"... like the story of Masamune and Muramasa.... read and enjoy! This deals with Ethics and Ideas. 

Legends of Masamune and Muramasa
>> A legend tells of a test where Muramasa challenged his master, Masamune, to see who could make a finer sword. They both worked tirelessly and eventually, when both swords were finished, they decided to test the results. The contest was for each to suspend the blades in a small creek with the cutting edge facing the current. Muramasa's sword, the Juuchi Yosamu (十千夜寒, "10,000 Cold Nights") cut everything that passed its way; fish, leaves floating down the river, the very air which blew on it. Highly impressed with his pupil's work, Masamune lowered his sword, the Yawarakai-Te (柔らかい手, "Tender Hands"), into the current and waited patiently. Only leaves were cut. However, the fish swam right up to it, and the air hissed as it gently blew by the blade. After a while, Muramasa began to scoff at his master for his apparent lack of skill in the making of his sword. Smiling to himself, Masamune pulled up his sword, dried it, and sheathed it. All the while, Muramasa was heckling him for his sword's inability to cut anything. A monk, who had been watching the whole ordeal, walked over and bowed low to the two sword masters. He then began to explain what he had seen.

 "The first of the swords was by all accounts a fine sword, however it is a blood thirsty, evil blade, as it does not discriminate as to who or what it will cut. It may just as well be cutting down butterflies as severing heads. The second was by far the finer of the two, as it does not needlessly cut that which is innocent and undeserving."

When I am in New York, for the residency, I will be writing a story in paintings and social interactions.... a kind of story of the past 11 years in New York... and will be making work. I think I will be focusing on my friends and the places I visit and have visited with them as "The New Ephesus"... as said by one of my profs while I was in Grad School.

"I would be inclined to draw some distinctions and define the thresholds more ... modernity, modernity, post modernity and post post modernity (political, cultural, scientific, and technological trajectories) and the responses to those via the humanities in art and literature... these conditions overlap. Modernity still lives in post modernity. Realizing that brings us to Meta-modernity and Meta-modernism's response.... a meta-modernist is someone who believes in something meaningful even as we face the issues of the inhuman. You are a meta modernist, making no bones about it, its what you are and do." - Prof Steve Knudsen (Prof Savannah College of Art and Design Savannah GA, Art Pulse Magazine)

... let us see what we will find! 

Residency April - May 2018 at The Sheen Center, New York, NY

Opening May 30, 2019, 6-8PM - The Sheen Center 18 Bleeker Street, New York, NY 10012.  Show runs May 30 - June 29, 2019.