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Infinite Regress CLXXXIII

In 2021, Eamon Ore-Giron painted Infinite Regress CLXXXIII for the Infinite Regress series he began in 2015. The work is 10 feet high by 15 feet wide, created with flashe and mineral paint on linen. While abstract, the painting plays with images like a phases of the moon chart, solar and lunar eclipses, a comet, fire, and fog. An infinite regress is a sequence of terms or ideas where each leads to the next, and there is none that will end the sequence. So, too, the elements of this painting are in arrangements without a definitive start or end point.

The canvas is painted a matte pale yellow-gold accented with strokes of orangey-yellow. At the center is a stack of five circles and a half-circle that reaches the top border and ends midway down. In the top half, sets of rays with tan edges stream from the left and right borders toward the center, narrowing until they nearly merge in between the stacked circles. The top set is six rays, icy blue on the left and dark yellow on the right. The middle set is five darker icy blue rays on the left and light gray on the right. The bottom set of five shows only the background color on the left and pale pink on the right. Below the rays on the left are three vibrant blue stripes that widen as they reach the center instead of narrowing like the rays above. On the right side, a two-toned circle like a sun eclipsing itself is sliced in half by the top and middle set of rays as well as a black bar that narrows toward the sides. The left side of the sun opens wider than the right, as if being pried in half.

The bottom circle of the central stack holds up the stack and is the hub for 15 spokes that fan out to the sides and front. Each spoke bends near its end point, and near each bend is a black, gray, or black and gray circle hovering nearby or touching a spoke. These spokes and circles fill the bottom half of the painting. A typical chart of the phases of the moon is orderly with a full moon gradually turning black from one side to the other until it is a new moon, and the black recedes until the moon is full again. Ore-Giron’s imagining feels lively and creative: Sometimes the bottom of a moon has a thin black sliver. They alternate from left to right side, growing and shrinking unpredictably. In some cases, the black sliver bleeds onto the spoke near a moon, or two slivers begin to overtake one moon. Near the center, on the left, a new moon eclipses a full moon. A cut-out segment of the black new moon makes a hunk of the yellow background appear to be in front of it, not behind. Time and space are not what they appear to be.

The central stack of circles contains an array of colors and shapes. In the top two tan circles rimmed with dark red, a pale pink and blue shape with a sharp tip and a wide base like a comet drops down. The third circle is yellow on top and tan on the bottom and has a turquoise circle sitting within a teal half-circle like a ship in front of a full moon. From the shiplike shape a red beacon points downward, widening as it streams to nearly touch the bottom circle. And that bottom circle is a full moon with a blaze of red, orange, and yellow fire rising up within it.

Displayed together, Ore-Giron’s many, many dozens of paintings form an infinite regress. But even solo, the abstract, somewhat futuristic study of celestial bodies in this one feels like it is itself being played on a loop.