The separation of heaven and earth

Numerous stories tell of the separation of heaven and earth. They are usually cleavage myths, poignant, confusing, humorous, or even pitiless stories.

Long ago, nothing separated sky and earth. Heaven and earth were a couple embracing each other, like Nut the goddess of heaven and Geb the god of earth in Egypt. Like Gaia the goddess of earth and Uranus the god of heaven in Greece from their union was born Kronos. The fruit of perfection one could think if the son had not emasculated his father with a sickle. A cut. Nevertheless, the Golden Age arises, a peaceful world and happy people. Perhaps that is the reason why Kronos later was equated with Chronos, the Greek winged god of time.

There are, of course, also stories telling about a connection like a heavenly ladder, a rope, a staircase and thus describe a paradise state. Separated and yet connected. Separation creates space and time, but also polarity, up and down, man and woman, heaven and earth, life and death. Separation creates distance, movement not standstill and life which strives again for union.

World as a place of complementary duality in which a reversal of the opposites returns into chaos, not order, but again primordial soup from which everything arose.

• Loam plaster on jute with iron sculpture 240 x 78 x 50 cm