Corpus et Spiritus

With the introduction of the modern period came drastically new ways of exploring religious themes in art. Messages that were once solely expressed by a representational approach is now conveyed in non-representational and abstract ways. This mental discipline exists to unify and organize an approach and set of observations by the artist.

The artist, Farhad Nargol-O'Neill, is a contemporary Canadian/Irish sculptor who has a strong interest in religious art and has used his skills to profoundly explain and reclaim a religious theme. Corpus et Spiritus is a sculpture that has been created with the skills of a modern artist to investigate and explore the beliefs and practice of a Christian faith over two millennia old. Corpus et Spiritus seeks to express two fundamental pillars of Christian experience: Easter and Pentecost.

In this twenty-first century, this is a remarkable sculpture to arise from a multicultural and largely secular democracy, where many of our faith practices have lost their religious significance. High Holy Days have become civic holidays, commercialized and largely secular. True understanding of religious practice and principles has been, to a large extent, overshadowed by the politicization of religion for political, party, commercial or nationalistic ends. This sculpture represents a creative effort to fight this trend, and create a dialogue between idea and viewer through visual art. Corpus et Spiritus portrays the essence of the Christian experience and yet can be understood by a viewer whose religion may not be Christian.

The sculptor has constructed this piece in order to mystify our experience of art and spirituality as a direct and wordless expression. This reflects the modern artistic search for a universal but formal quality of Idea as Icon. However, the artist does not define this art solely in terms of ‘Beauty’ or ‘Form’ but rather as “the expression of the life of the community”. He asserts that this aesthetic quality of this expression is the same for “Greek, Chinese, or First Nations Peoples”.

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