Between Nothingness and Paradise :

A homage to David Bowie, Peter Beard and Psychostimulants

Note: The Entry Page, "The Good Shepherd Lost One," was the first image created for Between Nothingness and Paradise. It has served as a visual preface, easily finding circulation in bars, cafes, and galleries. Responses have run the spectrum. Men have brushed it aside; wives, after hesitation, have called it sexy. Right now, someone is exclaiming "disgusting" and, in the next moment, finding that they are unable to resist a second and third glance. Who is this artist? Introduction at hand, what is the larger show?

The Artist

de la Haba is a gambler. He might say this before mentioning that he is also an artist. In his studio, you'll find the normal things-- easel, full bar, and a 14'craps table. Good fortune at gambling has made him a ten-year owner of race horses. That luck has carried over: the winner's circle at Saratoga is far from unfamiliar. Luck, as well, has sometimes run out. A perusal of New York's public records will reveal that he faced heavy fine and near arrest when the FDNY came down on a speakeasy he was operating out of a Queens loft. This is de la Haba in a nutshell. In the emerging artist's world of office day-job or come-and-go freelance project, de la Haba makes a different kind of choice: handicap race horses and roll the dice.

This year, it all becomes the subject of his art. Commentary occurs on two levels, each closely linked to the other. First, there is the world of gambling and other psychostimulants; a place where the height of experience is not spiritual nor even intimate, but chemical, impersonal, random. Here, opposites thrive. Poised at a video slot, the persistent man is screwed; following a bout of losses, the positive outlook may well be your worst enemy. Thus, and in manifold other ways, the normal person is carried to abnormal extremes. In brief, we careen toward highs and lows, irrational thoughts and crazed actions, because there is little of appeal in between.

Second, there is commentary on the level of metaphor, which deals with winners and losers in general and how society deals with this circumstance, a circumstance that it increasingly attempts to obliterate as fact and deny as inevitability. In this forum, de la Haba's art embraces natural forces, critiques society-wide attempts to blunt the imperative of natural selection or erase a piece of history because it is ugly and offends. The world happens; the House wins, his work seems to say. All ship's passengers tightly strapped into life jackets, someone still drowns. Not cynicism, but realism. In each circumstance and interaction that de la Haba presents, a matter of odds.

The Work

Between Nothingness and Paradise features three main installation pieces. Other, namely smaller, "altered" objects (as well as 2D images) provide additional vantage points while offering the viewer a change in scale. Walking through a studio of de la Haba's work, one enters and re-enters his vision-- sometimes from a satellite distance, other times smack up against the proscenium-- and does not exit until out of doors.

The intention of the following text is to offer the reader some of that experience while also providing a clear description of each of the three main works.

Image One is titled "Indian Givers." It features three Totem Poles constructed of Las Vegas slot machines-- spades and cherries brightly lit and bandit arms gleaming. Each Totem builds to the height of 16 feet, often with slots jutting out from the sides, smartly catching the wavering eye.

On the back of each Totem hang two dreamcatchers, each 6 feet in diameter. The outside circles are formed in neon light, thus replacing the sacred with that particular glow of barroom window and casino wall. Instead of the usual fine web of twine or silk, wolf and bear skins span the ring. And where feathers normally dangle, de la Haba displays the whole bird, specifically, mangled looking hens and cocks.

No chiefs or ancestors look down from the top of de la Haba's Totems, or, perhaps they do. Lettered in neon, the pinnacle of one Totem declares, "Free spirits here.” The other coaxes, "Dream On." What sort of gambler, what breed of consumer, does de la Haba here envision? Do the words mock, or is there a covert sympathy?

Gradually apparent as we circle around, the Totems are positioned on green casino carpet, complete with the images of dollar signs and slot machines. The carpet, however apropos, is also a stand-in—the entire floor pattern is modeled after the 18th putting green at Shinecock Hills Golf Course, the Shinecocks being yet another Native American tribe seeking to build a casino on their ancestral lands. On the edge of this green, there stands a startlingly large taxidermied crow. Its beak is open in a squawk, and the bulk of its body is impaled by an arrow. Mechanized from the inside, the crow beats its wings violently. Almost as an afterthought, de la Haba here gives us an entity that refuses to be made a dead thing and turned into advertisement.

Image Two , "Under Gods," is, partly, a scene of crucifixion. Seven-foot-high crosses display three taxidermied wolves. Their bodies are stretched taut across the full length of each vertical beam. The wolves' faces are aflame with seething red eyes, animated, it seems, through the course of a gruesome death. Each cross is titled: the first, “Halal;” the second, “Kosher;” third, “BINGO!” With this, it may be that more than one reality is laid bare.

Near the base of the crosses squat three taxidermied baboons, collectively representing the triple-pronged wisdom of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. Fur, faces, and colored haunches show natural variations among the three, but the hand of de la Haba is revealed in uniformly Barbie-doll-blue eyes. Two of the apes, the pair nearest the crosses, are deep in argument. Their dress and headwear show them to be Jew and Muslim. The Jew uses one hand to cover his ear; the other is a fist pounding the air. The Muslim chooses to shield his eyes but likewise drives his point with an angry arm in the air. The action is contained by a circus ring, 10 feet in diameter and 1 foot high. The relative quiet outside the ring is heightened by the presence of a solitary spectator. It is a Boy Scout, sitting attentively on the ring. The child wears the mask of de la Haba. In body and expression, he is transfixed by the figure of the third baboon, who is made dignified and regal by a priest's vestments. The “priest,” with his face, hand, and finger conveying the vital character of his instruction, motions to the youth, “Shhhhh!” The boy, to his own shock, understands completely.

Image Three is a circus ring replete with all the grandiosity of the Big Top; for Between Nothingness and Paradise , it is the climax of art vis-à-vis spectacle. Clearly, this ring is Center Ring, and as the viewer approaches, all other images can reasonably be understood as preparation. There appears to be a narrator, a guide of sort to this tableau, and we might well begin here.

If earlier we encountered de la Haba as Boy Scout the Innocent, now we are presented with something of the full man; and accordingly, simple assessments are decidedly absent. In the present context, the artist can only be Ringmaster, and the eye quickly takes in thigh-high boots, gleaming knight's vest, august red overcoat. Stockings further accentuate a codpiece that is bejewelled, embellished with Renaissance-era tapestry, and, in a word, large. The figure's face is a mask complete with glass eyes, again a likeness of de la Haba, but painted differently than Image Two's fledgling boy. Perhaps unnoticed before, we now realize that the Master is bound at the ankle by ball and chain. There is an odd feeling that we know who would perpetrate such an act, but, ostensibly, he is nowhere to be seen.

To step into the ring is to encounter the main source of our initial visceral reaction: three life-size taxidermied horses. The most striking is a dark purple stud, reared on hind legs to the dramatic height of 12 feet. A glance to his underside reveals a blatant show of virility. Up top, nostrils flare ahead of blue eyes. A needle juts from a swollen, and what is hard to resist calling an arrogant, vein in the stud's neck, thus reprising an established theme: stimulant. On the ground, two females flank the careening stud in all-out sexual display. Their hides are wedding-gown white, while their faces are lit by eyes a color red that recalls something of Dorothy's slippers. They wear garter belts that glitter in harmony with elaborate headdresses-- all in all, much like Vegas showgirls. One "girl" dances on her back with legs high in the air; the other squats on hind legs and stretches her head in the direction of the stud's prowess. Is the male thus seduced by temptresses, or instead, he conquers his prize?

Dazzling, embedded with jewels, and again that ruby red, a ribbon flows about the entire scene. The fabric undulates; twists, shifts; captures and holds the eye. It runs through space in the kind of motion that, if we could dance along, would make wild dreams come true. It is a rein, and it clasps the bit of each of Center Ring's three performers, and finally returns to the Ringmaster. Here, in black leather glove, we find neither a powerful grasp nor a gesture of release, but a partially open hand.

Perhaps now we come back to the Ringmaster's mask. We look closely. There is a face there, and in the face, sadness. Yearning, it could be, as well. We think about that big codpiece. The Ringmaster's eyes stare into the distance, away from the show.