Instalment 9 (visual art_v2)

[…it’s still gone]

Montgomery, Robert. Fire Poem 4. 2013.

A pointedly minimalist artwork. ‘TO BE LIKE THE WEATHER’ is the first half of the puzzle. It exposes a yearning to be free; free to wander, free to be in a ceaseless state of flux, free to change without labels tugging at the sleeves of your being. The second piece — ‘TO BE NO LONGER THE BROKEN HEARTED SERVANTS OF MAD KINGS’ — indicts the constraints that check humanity from becoming ‘like the weather’. A white-hot jab at exploitative institutions that systematically harvest the labor of their employees and underlings. Montgomery indicates by proxy that workers and CEOs, respectively, are the ‘broken hearted servants’ and ‘mad kings’ of the new age.

The placement of the fire poem is significant. The setting is green, lush and full of highly combustible plant life, but Montgomery has taken efforts to confine the blaze to the wooden letters (as the fire-resistant tarp placed underneath the poem attests). Pair this with the fact that Montgomery is a fervent environmentalist, consider that much of his art purports conservationist messages. We can glimpse the artist’s quiet message by example — construct your grand, destructive devices, but cull their fire from scorching the natural world. In other words: do what you want, build what you will, but don’t let those creations damage the world around you. And yearn forever to be like the weather.