Jesus Falls
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Jesus Falls by John M. Robertson
Materials: acrylic paint, toner, glass beads, glass, brass plumb bob, clock hands, carpenter’s rule, slide rule, sandpaper, typeset, black river stones, hematite.
Dimensions: 35”x29”
Date: 2009
This depicts a moment when Christ fell while carrying his cross on his way to be crucified. Christ is God in the flesh. Therefore, for Him to fall, He was submitting himself to the law of gravity in the same way that, for Him to be executed, He was submitting himself to the law of man. It is odd to think that He who created gravity and could therefore transcend it would ever submit himself to its rule. It follows then, that Christ’s entire life was a submission of sorts to the gamut of physical laws and biological processes governing life in this reality.
Additional Information:
Among those depicted: gravity (plumb bob), time (clock hands), 3-dimensional space (slide rule piece and carpenter’s ruler), pain (neural anatomic drawing, neurotransmitter Substance P), touch (sandpaper), hunger (stomach), defecation (intestines), urination (kidney), breathing (lungs), and circulation (heart).
In this piece, Christ is at once falling and submitting to Copernicus, Isaac Newton, and Galileo dressed in the breast plate and headgear of the Jewish high priests (kohen gadol). His head is bowed under gravity as the time of his earthly life ebbs away. Drops of blood (ovals of coarse garnet sandpaper) from a brow pierced by a crown of thorns pool on a landscape of fine sandpaper (dust to dust, Genesis 3:19).
The stop motion photographs of a man in a forward handspring interrupted by a bird (Aedweard Muybridge, 1887) illustrate both the flow of time the eternal confined Himself to as well as the necessary release of the Holy Spirit (bird) affected by the crucifixion (frame outlined in red).
The piece is divided into diurnal sections of day and night, day when the light of Christ was present marches into the night of His crucifixion and subsequent three days in the tomb prior to His resurrection.
The frame conveys the appearance of a cobblestone path that I imagine Christ might have fallen on (in reality the Via Dolorosa is composed of large flagstones). Interspersed through the cobblestones are polished iron ore stones. When touched, these stones activate red LED edge lighting that illuminates the glass engraved version of the Scripture:
Rather, He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Philippians 2:7-8 (New International Version)
The touch-operated lighting is designed to draw the observer in close to the detail of the piece.
The font is LED Board Reversed by Paul Hustava, chosen because the dots that compose each letter point to the idea that each of the physical and biological laws illustrated in the piece compose our reality. The first letter in the engraving “J” is depicted enlarged in a font based on the font Leonardo by Levi Halmos which is based on Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
The image of Christ falling amidst a crowd of onlookers is from a painting in a church in Valletta, Malta.
Created in 2009 for an Easter Stations of the Cross exhibition at Xnihilo Gallery (Houston, TX). “Jesus Falls for the First Time” is the third station.
Dimensions: 35”x29”
Date: 2009
This depicts a moment when Christ fell while carrying his cross on his way to be crucified. Christ is God in the flesh. Therefore, for Him to fall, He was submitting himself to the law of gravity in the same way that, for Him to be executed, He was submitting himself to the law of man. It is odd to think that He who created gravity and could therefore transcend it would ever submit himself to its rule. It follows then, that Christ’s entire life was a submission of sorts to the gamut of physical laws and biological processes governing life in this reality.
Additional Information:
Among those depicted: gravity (plumb bob), time (clock hands), 3-dimensional space (slide rule piece and carpenter’s ruler), pain (neural anatomic drawing, neurotransmitter Substance P), touch (sandpaper), hunger (stomach), defecation (intestines), urination (kidney), breathing (lungs), and circulation (heart).
In this piece, Christ is at once falling and submitting to Copernicus, Isaac Newton, and Galileo dressed in the breast plate and headgear of the Jewish high priests (kohen gadol). His head is bowed under gravity as the time of his earthly life ebbs away. Drops of blood (ovals of coarse garnet sandpaper) from a brow pierced by a crown of thorns pool on a landscape of fine sandpaper (dust to dust, Genesis 3:19).
The stop motion photographs of a man in a forward handspring interrupted by a bird (Aedweard Muybridge, 1887) illustrate both the flow of time the eternal confined Himself to as well as the necessary release of the Holy Spirit (bird) affected by the crucifixion (frame outlined in red).
The piece is divided into diurnal sections of day and night, day when the light of Christ was present marches into the night of His crucifixion and subsequent three days in the tomb prior to His resurrection.
The frame conveys the appearance of a cobblestone path that I imagine Christ might have fallen on (in reality the Via Dolorosa is composed of large flagstones). Interspersed through the cobblestones are polished iron ore stones. When touched, these stones activate red LED edge lighting that illuminates the glass engraved version of the Scripture:
Rather, He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Philippians 2:7-8 (New International Version)
The touch-operated lighting is designed to draw the observer in close to the detail of the piece.
The font is LED Board Reversed by Paul Hustava, chosen because the dots that compose each letter point to the idea that each of the physical and biological laws illustrated in the piece compose our reality. The first letter in the engraving “J” is depicted enlarged in a font based on the font Leonardo by Levi Halmos which is based on Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
The image of Christ falling amidst a crowd of onlookers is from a painting in a church in Valletta, Malta.
Created in 2009 for an Easter Stations of the Cross exhibition at Xnihilo Gallery (Houston, TX). “Jesus Falls for the First Time” is the third station.
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Books I used in this project:
