Ostrischizocracy

David Normal’s Crossroads of Curiosity is an epic suite of lightbox murals that extends the notion of a “cabinet of curiosity” outward from the rectilinear arrangement of objects in glass cases to encompass the world in a series of dramatic tableaux featuring provocative juxtapositions of vastly different times, places, and peoples.

Crossroads of Curiosity was installed at Burning Man 2014 and had a 5 month exhibition at the British Library in 2015. The collage-based paintings were composed exclusively from the digitized antiquarian illustration collection of the British Library. Crossroads was essential to supporting the Burning Man Festival's 2014 theme, "Carvansary", in close collaboration with Larry Harvey, and was displayed prominently at the "Man Pavilion" where the Burning Man Effigy stood.

David Normal’s Crossroads of Curiosity is an epic suite of lightbox murals that extends the notion of a “cabinet of curiosity” outward from the rectilinear arrangement of objects in glass cases to encompass the world in a series of dramatic tableaux featuring provocative juxtapositions of vastly different times, places, and peoples.

Crossroads of Curiosity was installed at Burning Man 2014 and had a 5 month exhibition at the British Library in 2015. The collage-based paintings were composed exclusively from the digitized antiquarian illustration collection of the British Library. Crossroads was essential to supporting the Burning Man Festival's 2014 theme, "Carvansary", in close collaboration with Larry Harvey, and was displayed prominently at the "Man Pavilion" where the Burning Man Effigy stood.

Ostrischizocracy was the first of the four compositions to be made. In some respects it is the simplest, but in other respects it is the most comical of the four paintings. It sets the stage with a number of motifs that are used throughout the paintings: Roman bathes, unconscious women, androgynous prophets with empty books, and therianthropic hybrids of humans and birds. Look carefully at the series and you will find these motifs repeated and varied in a number of instances in the artwork.