I was motivated to try and apply Neo-plasticist Theory to the subject of the abstracted body or in medical terms the atrophied body. In the late 1970's, I was not only inspired but had made contact and opened a dialogue with the Austrian 'body artist' Arnulf Rainer, who had seen my own contorting pieces in front of the Maximum Security Prison in Canada. I have always held to a perspective that the human body could also become abstract in the sense of not only contortion but also physiologically, i.e., dwarfs, our societies fetish with the freak show, etc.
With these drawing I thought that I'd try the same application of contortion, but instead of using my own body I would take my hand and pen/cil to paper.
Here I take an abstracted or deformed body, thinking that it could represent Emanuel Kant's facile and sanctimonious critique of art, where in he says that 'art is what has no function'. To explain: think of a piece of fired clay, if it is formed into a vessel - it serves function and becomes pottery, if the clay serves no real function except for form - it becomes art. So these deformed figures, carrying their deconstructed and dysfunctional crutches, become the Pure Form = art. Then by applying "healing" to the form the figure and crutch become whole. The crutch in the last panel is a fully functioning ambulatory aid. Ironically, I see this work fluctuating back and forth like a teeter-tooter, from the applied form to the pure form, the healthy to the infirmed. What is real is also abstract. Both perspective forms and their transitions have function and follow form.
The body in all its glory and in its complete frailty, is a resplendent thing. I'm glad I have one, even if it doesn't work as well as others tell me that it could. This body is all I've ever known! In it I have seen the stars, Orion's belt and the Pleiades. It has been baptized or submersed in all the great oceans of this modest blue globe. It has traversed up severe rock faces in the Dolomites and ambulated the soft lush valleys of Haida Qwaii (The Queen Charlotte Islands). It's passion has brought me the greatest joy of life - bringing forth life itself - it's crowning triumph: my sweet, sweet babes, Joshua and Nicole I love you so!
In short: this body, it's all I got and I love the damm thing cause it houses my soul.

Think of the alternative to the above "life or no life" - the notion that someone healthy could think that anyone, even in a broken body, would not want life, based on a assessment of 'quality of life' - is not only anathema to me, its really f%@king sick. Even vegetables enjoy life, that's why they grow and reproduce. If life is good enough for a 1 celled being, then who has the right to decide what lives and what doesn't except for the life form itself! Stupid arrogant nazi f%@ks - go clone yourselves or have your DNA reconstituted into a super beings and see what happens - your myopic arrogance is paramount to complete lunacy, which regrettably does have ramifications!
I dedicate this page to all the martyrs of Pure Form.

Gerard Pas. 2002