“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
— Genesis 2:17
90” H x 37½” W x 22” D
229 cm x 95 cm x 56 cm
books, mirrors, paint, wood, plaster, metal
(2008)
In “I Know” I relate the Genesis story of the instinctive, insistent and overwhelming need to know what cannot be known—Adam and Eve reaching for, grasping and eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge—with Buddhists’ locating the cause of human suffering in clinging to a non-self self.
In both stories we see an assertion of an “I” – an I rent from relationship with Being by the very act of grasping. We see perception distorted by that grasping, and the resultant suffering.