The Triumph of Light
In 1955, the San Francisco Parks and Recreation department removed a pile of concrete chunks from the top of Mt. Olympus, at the geographical center of the city. Maybe pieces of a goddess's torso, or drapery, or a demon's leg, the crumbles were what remained of "The Triumph of Light," a monumental statue that had topped the stone pedestal on the hill since 1887.
Today, the bare pedestal surmounts Mt. Olympus. It's a survivor.
In Study for The Triumph of Light, we see a recreation of the absent statue, floating in the sky above its pedestal, and photographic stills of the historical and present-day space of Mt. Olympus. We see light, and lightness, we see the presence in absence. We see the past's longing for its future, and the future's longing for its past. We see an ephemeral object in the present.
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