- Rhizome
- Journal
- Artbase
- Community
- Programs

## Temptation of Christ (2015)

by Art Portal

Tweet

Tom Estes' installation introduces a new kind of artwork that functions more as art proposal for a partially realized exhibition; a document of visual and spatial modes of presentation that theorizes a different approach.

The digital installation, The Temptation of Christ, by Tom Estes was created for The Biennial Project’s Marfa Artist Residency. The work's title comes from The story of The Temptation of Christ, a Biblical story which is detailed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For Biblical contemporaries, the desert was seen as outside the bounds of society and as the home of demons. According to the texts, after being baptized, Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the Judaean Desert. During this time, Satan appeared to Jesus and tried to tempt him. Jesus having refused each temptation, the devil then departed and Jesus returned to Galilee. Like the Judaean Desert of the Biblical narrative, the tiny town of Marfa, where the work was staged, is perched on the high plains of the Chihuahua desert. However, Marfa is also a blue-chip arts destination and nothing less than an art world station of the cross, like Art Basel Documenta in Germany. Estes' work is suggestive of the ghost towns of the gunslingers of the old west and the theme of the battle between good and evil. By presenting the Biblical story of 'the offer to Jesus to worship the devil in return for all the kingdoms of the world', Estes also suggests some of the potential temptations for artists in a hyper-materialistic, market led art world.

Estes presents us with an image of a baker as the temptation of making bread out of stones occurs in the same kind of desert setting where Jesus had been fasting. In the same manner as the Biblical text, Estes' installation conjures up a kind of ghostly field of material and imagined objects. In his practice, Estes creates digital images as documentation of the works formation. This is the only physical manifestation of the original artistic intent. Though the state of being unrealized implies the potential for realization, this installation was never intended to be fully carried out. By intentionally leaving the project unrealized or un-materialized, this has a flattening effect which merely implies the existence of the installation in real-time, three-dimensional space rather than as a digital projection.

Discussion of the literary genre of the Biblical story includes whether what is represented is a history, a parable, a myth, or compound of various genres. This relates to the "reality" of the encounter. In terms of social reception, the temptation narrative is sometimes taken literally as factual event, and sometimes taken as a parable. The artist was raised as a Catholic in which the understanding is that the temptation of Christ is a literal and physical event. Or is it autobiographical, regarding what sort of Messiah Jesus intended to be? Or Jesus in his ministry told this narrative to audiences relating his inner experience in the form of a parable? Writers including William Barclay have pointed to the fact that there is "no mountain high enough in all the world to see the whole world" as indication of the non-literal nature of the event, and that the narrative portrays what was going on inside Jesus' mind, and the possibility of a non-literal devil. This can be seen in contrast to a return to religous values in America, in which a Fundamentalist interpretation the Bible is a literal one, despite the debate on the literality of the temptations going back at least to the discussion of George Benson (d.1762) and Hugh Farmer.

Tags:

###### Full Description

As an artist Estes is interested in our contemporary relationship between machines and humans. Machines enable us to do things but they also do things to us and do things at us. In a post-internet society, we are completely enveloped by abstract systems and inundated with information that we are struggling to come to terms with. So within this closed circuit of illusion Estes also anticipates the contemporary practice of online marketing of a work which reduces an installation to a single image.

Through the work Estes explores the interplay between real space, virtual space and the digital as a shaping condition and structuring paradox. He tries to do this with wit and economy in order to examine how data-flow from the virtual realm impacts on the significance and symbolism of real-world human senses. Individual works such as this one can also be seen as part of a wider interdisciplinary practice that incorporates innovative web conversations and social networks. But in doing so, Estes has begun to generate unexpected questions about how photography might inscribe itself on the surface of reality- not to represent itself on the surface of reality –not to represent reality, nor to duplicate it, but to replace it.

The digital installationThe Temptation of Christ by artist Tom Estes was created as part of The Biennial Project’s Marfa Artist Residency in Marfa Texas

https://artselectronic.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/marfa-digital-residency

###### Work metadata

- Year Created: 2015
- Submitted to ArtBase: Monday Mar 2nd, 2015
- Original Url: http://www.TomEstesArtist.com/
- Work Credits:
  - tom_estes8, primary creator

Want to see more?
Take full advantage of the ArtBase by Becoming a Member

###### Artist Statement

Born outside of Boston in The U.S.A, I moved to Paris and lived there for a couple of years before settling for London as my base of operations. i As an artist my work has been hung, played and performed in a few of the world’s right places and a couple of deliciously wrong ones. There is a real Peter Pan Syndrome at play in my art work and I suppose I would consider myself a carnival sideshow conceptualist, combining a bare-bones formal conceptualism with an eternal adolescent comic-prank DIY- approach.

For me ‘fantasy’ and ‘illusion’ are not a contradiction of reality, but instead an integral part of our everyday lives. I have always leaned toward making work participatory or immersive in some way so while my practice is characterized by the mediums of photography, performance and installation, individual works can also be seen as part of a wider interdisciplinary project that incorporates innovative web conversations and social networks.

###### Comments

This artwork has no comments. You should add one!