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Life, death and spirituality are all complexities that are explored in professor Jim Morphesis’ new paintings that are now showcased in his own new exhibit “Wounds of Existence” that runs from January 25 to May 31 at The Pasadena Museum of California Arts.
As strange as the title might sound for the exhibit, the paintings themselves are baffling and eye-catching. A mesmerizing collection of paintings depicting skulls including one painting of a skull detailed with the help of an ominous wooden door placed next to a large skull image. Paintings of crucifixes show flesh and bone that capture the suffering marks that are left on the body—the wounds. When it comes to the painting “Skull and Red Door,”Morphesis said there was “something about that one.”

“That one is the most physical artwork, just the whole way it happened,” Morphesis said. “I remember it and once I was finished with it that was what I was looking for.”

Much of his artwork was detailed with wooden panels or doors. The use of wooden panels really help give the work a 3-D look.

“Using wood panels, I wanted the artwork to be thicker and physical,” Morphesis said. “I wanted the paintings to look like it was rotting or coming together, and I like using wood that was used for another purpose because it brings its own history to the painting.”
The crucifix paintings were really detailed, from flesh to bone. “Prometheus Bound” is a painting that brings up Morphesis’ heritage, the painting refers to Greek gods. In the picture is shown a punishment of the titan named Prometheus that stole fire from heaven to give to the mortals. As for the punishment, the titan is tied to a rock where an eagle is preying on his liver. The painting shows Prometheus’ flesh male body, beautiful but damaged.
“It’s not a particular message,” Morphesis said. “I think that for a lot of people, it all kind of deals with wounds and crucifixes and death but I see the opposite too. There’s life in all of this, life’s difficult, life’s getting torturous, but there’s something exuberant and wonderful about it too, it has all those things, and I kind of want that to come out of these paintings too.”
For the idea behind the paintings of meat on a hook “Marsyas IX” and “Marsyas III,” the inspiration comes from when Morphesis lived in a New York studio and the floor below his studio was a meat packing company. Seeing the hanging sides of beef in the refrigerator impressed him as both pitiful and heroic sacrificial symbols. Jenkins Shannon, executive director of the museum, was really satisfied with the artwork and with the opening of the new exhibit.
“It’s a top notch exhibition, the artwork itself is marvelous and outstanding,” Shannon said. “There’s no other way to describe it, the installation of the exhibit came out excellent.”
PCC Student Leonel Guardado, an aspiring artist, was also present at the art show to see and collect art ideas and pointers. The first thing that came to his mind when he saw the painting was that it was “just really mysterious.”
“I like this type of art, all these paintings have so much detail in them that it makes me think just how many objects, like doors, can be used for art,” Guardado said.

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