Per Contra: The Fascinating Thomas Chimes

From the Per Contra Interview with Miriam N. Kotzin:

"MK: You’ve discussed your dreams in a number of previous interviews. Do you think your dreams influence your current work? If so, how?

TC: Yes, they do because my current work has to do with a consciousness of entropy. In my dreams now there’s a constant shifting from one scene to another, with no structured plot. I feel as though I’m searching for a place, but I don’t know what it is. So the dreams are the essence of entropy, with their disorder that comes through indecision and searching.

In my most recent phase of work, I write the word entropy on each painting. When I started this series, I wrote out the entire word, and then I started abbreviating. I wrote “ntrop.” Then I shortened it even further to “n t p.” When you read “n t p” aloud letter by letter, it echoes the whole word “entropy,” while embodying the concept of entropy itself because several letters have vanished.

I’ve given thought to how entropy works in the universe. All the matter was compressed—enormous weight, then came the explosion. Something begins small, and it grows to its appropriate maximum size. But as a result of entropy, it breaks down. It returns to the all-pervasive condition of the original soup, i.e., chaos, from which everything comes.

In a way, entropy creates a cycle. I think of it as analogous to what Joyce did with Finnegan’s Wake. The last words of the novel would be perfect iambic pentameter except for the final word. The final words are: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the.” And that one little word at the end, “the,” seems to break the rhythm, to be unfinished. But what “the” does is to send us to the beginning of the novel, where the first word is “riverrun.” What we’ve been given is the connection of the end to the beginning, in a cycle. We finish the novel, but its structure invites us, almost forces us to begin reading it again." - Read the Complete Interview

Per Contra Visual Arts Fall 2007