John Ganz

Bio: John Ganz was born in New York in 1985.

Artist Statement:

What does your work mean to you?

“I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring

and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in

mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling

to be free, and ending just where it began.”

-William Hazlitt, 1823

“There is something in being near the sea like the confines

of eternity. It is a new element, a pure abstraction. The

mind loves to hover on that which is endless, and forever

the same. People wonder at a steam boat, the invention of

man, managed by man, that makes its liquid path like an

iron railway through the sea--I wonder at the sea itself:

that vast Leviathan rolled round the earth smiling in its

sleep waked into fury fathomless boundless a huge world of

water drops--Whence is it, whither goes it, is it of eternity

or of nothing? Strange ponderous riddle that we can neither

penetrate nor grasp in our comprehension ebbing and flowing

like human life and swallowing it up in thy remorseless womb,

--what art thou? What is there in common between thy life and

ours who gaze at thee? Blind deaf and old thou seest not hearest

not understandest not neither do we understand who behold and

listen to thee! Great as thou art, unconscious of thy greatness,

unwieldy, enormous preposterous twin-birth of matter rest in

thy dark unfathomed cave of mystery, mocking human pride and

weakness. Still is it given to the mind of man to wonder at

thee, to confess its ignorance, and to stand in awe of thy

stupendous might and majesty and of its own being that can

question thine. But a truce with reflections.”

-William Hazlitt, 1826

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue

with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put an hook

into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak

soft words unto thee?
Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for

a servant for ever?
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind

him for thy maidens?
Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part

him among the merchants?
Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head

with fish spears?
Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be

cast down even at the sight of him?”
Job 41

Patrice Aphrodite Helmar