These days, when sourcing imagery for my own work, I am more inspired by street art and ancient art than anything I see in the galleries. I just got back from a trip to Santiago, Chile and Oaxaca, Mexico, and along with a few bottles of mescal, brought home a number of revelations. There is a neighborhood in Santiago, just north of downtown by the river called Bella Vista, where street art completely covers all of the homes, businesses, mailboxes…you get the idea. The effect is a dizzying, spectral experience that projects an architectural experience, not a subversive one. 

After a couple of weeks we made our way to the capital city of Oaxaca, which lies in a valley underneath a mountain topped by the ghostly plazas of the two thousand year old capital of the Zapotec nation, Monte Alban. It’s an ancient city of nobility with a strong, formally natural, figurative-sculptural tradition. Something about the combination of these two places, their attitude to art as a communal experience, the societal disposition to pictorial narrative, the scale of their public art, all brewed in my heart like a volcano display at a science fair - it was going to blow, and I needed an outlet.

I didn’t think I was going to exhibit my paintings in Oakland this year. I have some big solo shows coming up in Seattle in the summer, and San Francisco in the fall - that’s plenty. When Theo Konrad Auer told me that there were a couple weeks when the OakBook gallery would be empty, and asked if I had any projects I wanted to fill the space with, I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t accept Theo’s invitation and didn’t expect to embark on this mural. Then I went home and had the dream.

Before I describe the dream, I have to say that I read a lot of books on the trip. I read a bunch of novels and a couple of non-fiction works, too. I have always enjoyed alternate history, alt-archeology type-books. My attitude is that when it comes to history and even contemporary sociology, if you can cite your sources, and you’re not a raving crackpot - and you’re a good writer - hell, you have as much license as anybody to the truth. I read 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, by Daniel Pinchbeck. It’s a great read and a fascinating premise: The nature of consciousness might be physical, a quantum epiphenomenon that can shift, a concept that makes consciousness and the brain a question of the chicken and the egg. My brain was primed with fringe yet fascinating ideas, primed for the dream that made me accept the mural project that would become The Feathered Serpent.

I dreamed of an old man (no idea who he was, but he kinda looked like a skinny Mr. Miagi). We were in the cave of Lascaux, that Paleolithic wonder in France, but all the animals on the walls were painted with spray paint. The old man told me that he was across the universe and was responsible for all the crop circles in England. He said that we are all running too hot, that our real internal temperature should be 98.4 degrees. Then he turned into a snake with feathers instead of scales and slithered off under my feet - I heard giggling. I woke up and called Theo and told him I was in. The moment of commitment came from a mysterious place, a want to participate with that giggly old snake man, to find out what he is about, then to find out what I am about.

I had the gallery and I had the date, opening March 5th, first Friday. All that was left was the process of painting the mural. I had a big idea: I wanted to paint the gallery quickly, in one day, created with street art like parameters. Contingent on this whole endeavor was a temporary element: I want to destroy soon after it is made – like a Tibetan sand painting, not meant to exist for long or it would taint the meditation. I decided to base the composition itself on an elaborate story I imagined about the coming of the cosmos as analogous to the coming of human consciousness, all told through the human figure. I painted the same figure fifty times through nine chapters of history. The figure, a strong androgynous character I call Quetzalcoatl, after the Aztec name for the feathered serpent god, is a representation of the emergent potential of human cognition and transcendence.

I have been showing and selling my work, and other people’s work, in Oakland for many years now and there is a kind of homogeneous manner in which the art community moves from reception to reception, fetishizing and commercializing art objects for consumption and collection. I was drawn to this project because we are not selling anything but the idea of the community appreciating this mural as a thing, so short lived in the world. Exploring that idea, I am preparing the reception to be something other than a party, the idea demands an experience: the painting will be illuminated by candles and accompanied by music and a subtle performance. The mural will be labeled with a key to understanding the flow of the dramatic narrative.
The reception will be for only ninety minutes beginning at 6 pm, Friday, March 5th. I will be presenting the story and the visual sourcing of the mural on Sunday, March 7th at 3 pm. Tea and wine will be served. I will paint over the mural on Monday morning.

Obi Kaufmann is an Oakland artist and curator. He has had sold-out shows of his paintings in Oakland (Cricket Engine) and in Seattle (Bedlam) and has been featured at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City. His curatorial efforts have been featured on the cover of the East Bay Express and in Oakland Magazine and he was named 2009 Curator of the Year by the Piedmont Post. He curates artwork at Swee(t)Art Drawing Gallery and Zza’s Wine Bar Gallery.