In 2013 artist Jesse Bransford produced an exhibition for the Galveston Artist Residency. Titled The Fourth Pyramid, the exhibition was conceived at the prompting of founder/director Eric Schnell. From this prompt Bransford created a ‘spell’ for the city of Galveston, a large, multi-stage installation that operated with explicit magical intent. The work proved to be a watershed moment for the artist, who was completing a multi-year project which magically considered the planets using the perspective of Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.
The images and ideas of The Fourth Pyramid were founded on what became a small image book Bransford was constructing when Schnell first contacted him about the project. A limited edition of this book was produced as a companion to the installation in 2013. Calling to the emblem books of the 16th and 17th centuries, the book collected a number of images Bransford had been meditating upon in his personal magical practice at that time. In the text, each image is presented with a number as a footnote to the image, the number corresponding to a motto or statement at the end of the text. Connecting thought, number, and drawing in a triad of relations, each emblem becomes spell-like in their own right.
Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of this exhibition, the original text of The Fourth Pyramid is re-presented, alongside a second text, The Fifth Pyramid, which assembles second set of images that the artist has worked with in the ten years since the first iteration. The two volumes are limited to 400 examples, in a custom box, signed and hand-numbered by the artist.
