Jaime Caceres
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Philosophy
What is art? Time and the passing moment, I am tempted to answer. That Art should be beautiful is what traditional aesthetics teaches. Today the most questionable aspects of reality have become the province of images and may be--perhaps, must be--interpreted as beautiful. Perhaps Art encompasses what the mind confronts in time, its pleasing aspects and the disagreeable. My work reflects time, the ephemeral in my mirror, whether it be a moment or an image, its memory or lingering emotion.
What is time, then? I am not sure that it exists, as it is commonly understood. Time seems to be the basic order of reality, which is to say, time orders reality. Time is composed of distinct moments each successively being born and each successively passing away. Why this constant change? The ultimate question mark! No sufficient answer has been given. What can be said, with some certitude, is that time, as I experience it, is inseparable from change. Change is time, and time is change.
The cause of change, the cause of the constant flux that composes our fundamental experience has been through all ages the riddle that has vexed our most beloved philosophers. That we must experience this flux is perhaps, to some, our tragedy. The attempt to remember, to honor the fleeting, however, may be our working definition of art. The work here is a way to record the moments of an unstable existence, to give to time a peculiar eternity. Alas, it seems, this flux is in the end the only thing that is divine.
