We’re in motion all the time. Some part of us is constantly moving. It’s rare when our minds are quiet or our bodies still, we are always in movement one way or another: our hearts are pounding, we’re breathing, the earth is rotating, and yet, there is stillness within all this motion, and that contradiction is the underlying structure of my work.
Twin Serpents 2018, 113”x72”x36” Unique bronze
https://www.jonathanhertzel.com/images/nehushtan
In the Old Testament story of Nehushtan, Yahweh has become annoyed with the Jews complaining about conditions in the desert after their exodus from Egypt and sent down ‘fiery serpents’ that bit and killed many. Repenting, they asked Moses to intercede. Yahweh ordered Moses to make a bronze serpent mounted on a pole and then decreed that all who looked upon it would be healed. In the sculpture, Nehushtan, the serpent image is held aloft while groups of snakes remain in the background. Snake cults had existed in what we now call the Middle East since the Bronze Age — and this story sounds very much like an attempt to meld older beliefs with a monotheistic religion but for the sculptor, the tale of Nehushtan takes on a different tinge altogether. The story bears out Hertzel’s themes of human confusion and chaos in the face of what seems incomprehensible. Yahweh was rescuing the Jews but then turns on them — only to save them once again in the end. Snakes and idols, spoken of repeatedly in the Bible as evil, are here the symbol, indeed the method, of salvation. Again, the story resonates with our contemporary anxiety and consternation as accepted ethical standards and expectations of ourselves and the world in which we live are being overturned and demonized.