October 11, 2015
If Christ is to be to us a Saviour, we must find him here, now, and where we are, in this age of ours also; otherwise he is no Christ, no Saviour, no Immanuel, no “God with us.”
-Isaac Thomas Hecker (Questions of the Soul, 110-11)And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
-Mark 15:37-38
Openings is an interdisciplinary artist collective founded in 2006 as a project of the Paulist Fathers to engage in dialogue with artists. Over the years, Openings has developed into a vibrant and diverse community that values camaraderie, collaboration, and creativity. This ongoing project has led to our vision statement:
Openings believes that the connections between creativity and transcendence foster critical conversations that have the potential to unite individuals across cultural divides.
This vision statement recognizes that every artist participates in a shared transcendent experience surrounding their art practice, which may connect either to a sacred or secular worldview. Openings does not explicitly evangelize artists, however. Rather, it attempts to evangelize parishioners in their own continual conversion— calling them to ever greater catholicity. Parishioners are exposed to alternate visual languages, vocabularies, and ideas that can, through dialogue, enrich the faith and deepen the mystery.
The Openings collective has a vocation, serving artists and exposing them to the Church in an encounter they would not otherwise have. In our attempt to be “a Church which is poor and for the poor” (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 198), Openings reaches out to artists wherever they are in their lives, their development, and their beliefs. In this sense, the collective can be considered part of the urban missionary work of the Church. Continuing in the tradition of the Second Vatican Council, Openings attempts to reclaim the lost fragments of faith wandering among the ruins of modernity. Rather than applying liturgical criteria upon the work presented, we ask our audience to discern the spiritual truths latent in the artists’ own struggles.
The Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, the founding church of the Paulist Fathers, generously provides a unique platform that embodies the discussions and dialogue that give Openings its unique mission. As exemplified through our yearly group exhibitions, Openings offers a unique model for the church-community to engage the city and contemporary culture. These exhibitions present works that both intentionally and unintentionally register the different cultural, political, and theological currents within the Church itself, while interrogating and expanding its visual discourse.
Showing art in such a space as the church of Saint Paul the Apostle, already adorned with many liturgical works from previous centuries, allows one to re-experience the icons and permanent art in dialogue with the temporary installations. The Church frees the hermetic art-object by opening it to alternate interpretations and modes of reception – outside the scope of the original author’s intentions. The venue of the church, as opposed to the typical white, ‘neutral’ contemporary art gallery, suggests connections and alternate routes to enter the meaning of the work, instead of succumbing to the prevalent obsession with the signature or branding of the artist. This visual ecumenicalism, in which both the physical church and the artworks themselves are recognizable as part of a larger, whole expands and deepens our theological understanding by means of a visual culture usually foreign to the typical house of worship.
Through exposure to contemporary aesthetic practices the traditional art forms embedded in the church undergo their own renewal as well. By opening the doors of the church to other visual modes of representation, we hope to promote and inspire dialogue in exactly the same manner in which the church as a whole is concerned today. Dialogue marks a stage of continued life, in this case not merely of art, but of the church itself, as a living vessel of the Ekklesias (community of faithful).
We must be bold enough to discover new signs and symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.
-Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium, 167)
Timothy Matthew Collins divides his time between visual art, teaching architecture at the City College of New York, and working as a designer in Manhattan. Inspired by reading philosophy and theology, his work focuses on the interactions between collage and the miniature. He has recently begun to explore the implications of Christian Eschatology for the recovered fragment at the scale of the model.