the void that contains....

Christian Eckart. Detail Painting 532. Gold leaf on panel, white frame.

The frame has become the art; and the wall, the frame.

The blank space outside of the art, behind the art, on which and in which the art is, has encroached onto the frame. The void contains the art; has become the vessel. The reliquary. The nothing that draws attention to the something.

M. Shartel. White/Gold Abstract. Acrylic on canvas, 2012.

Or perhaps there's been a reversal. Perhaps the gold has become the void. The figures that emerge where the ground of being ruptures. Gives way. Gives birth.

The nothing is always surrounded by the something.

where the something becomes everything....

Christian Eckart. One of the Andachtsbild series on the left.
One of the Eidolon series on the right. Gold leaf on wood.

In Christian Eckart's gold works, the frame grows ever wider. From the Eidolons -- gold frames framing nothing -- to the Andachtsbilds, where the nothing is almost gone. Where the something that surrounds it, is everything. Where the something almost negates it. Almost silences it.

Where the void -- the sacred -- is almost lost.

Where the gold that reveals it, almost consumes it.

Christian Eckhart. Two works from the Andachtsbild series. 1993

"every something is an echo of nothing"....

Christian Eckart. Eidolon #1103. 1989. 23 karat gold leaf on poplar.

The frame without a picture, framing nothing. A golden arrow, pointing to the void. 

Free-standing like a sculpture. Like a vessel. Like a figure. 

A body containing a ghost.

“Every something is an echo of nothing.”  

— John Cage