The Black Sun

The Black Sun evolved through an intuitive, freeform process, where layers of gestural mark-making created emerging forms and symbols. At the centre of the piece is the alchemical symbol of the sol niger(black sun), which appeared spontaneously. Like Jung’s method of active imagination, the work becomes a dialogue with the unconscious, both personal and collective, aiming for psychic transformation and individuation.

This process is documented and reflected in the film The Black Sun: Mise en Abyme, developed from still photographs taken during the painting’s evolution. The painting and film form a recursive loop, each medium reflecting and reframing the other, evoking a visual mise en abyme. The process is autopoietic and self-generating, where form emerges through the tension between conscious intention and unconscious impulse.

The black and white palette serves as a metaphor for opposition, highlighting symbolic contrasts between light and dark, consciousness and unconsciousness, trauma and integration.  This reflects the alchemical process of nigredo, the dark dissolution that initiates transformation, and Jung's coniunctio oppositorum, the union of opposites.   The Black Sun represents the void, trauma and psychic loss, which may act as a catalyst for regeneration.

By integrating image, process, and philosophy, the work exists in a liminal space, between mediums, states of consciousness, and destruction and rebirth. It invites the viewer not only to observe but also to engage in a process of reflection and internal resonance.

References

Jung, C.G. and Jung, C.G. (1977) Mysterium coniunctionis: an inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press (The collected works of C.G. Jung, v. 14).