Æmen Ededéen

Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to host a book signing with Æmen Ededéen on the occasion of the release of Nihil, published under the artist’s former name, Joshua Hagler. The event coincides with the exhibition of a single monumental work: the roughly eleven-by-nineteen-foot mixed-media triptych The Noise of Fear is Drifting down the River, You cannot Die. The painting is the Fourteenth Vision in Ededéen’s ongoing Glass Dream Game series. The exhibition runs February 28 – April 4 with an opening reception from 5-7pm preceded by the book signing at 4pm.

The triptych originates from a written Dream dated May 1, 2025, which precedes and generates the work. In the text, a woman and child appear beside a river, enclosed within a protective, seeing sphere through which past, future, memory, and fear coexist. Fear is described not as a fixed threat, but as something transmitted across time. The painting does not illustrate the Dream; rather, it translates its essence into scale, material, and surface.

Æmen Ededéen is a player of The Glass Dream Game, which draws inspiration from Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and the I Ching, blending literary, philosophical, and divinatory traditions into a contemporary artistic practice. The Game begins with the random selection of six books from the artist’s library of more than 900 volumes. One page from each book is selected, forming a Hexagram. Notes and sketches derived from these pages—called Trials—lead to the writing of a Dream, from which a Vision emerges as a painting or artwork. As elements recur across Dreams and Visions, they are cataloged as Archetypes, forming an expanding network of relationships. The Glass Dream Game remains experimental, and its broader implications are still unfolding.

The name Æmen Ededéen came to the artist years ago but was fully adopted at the inception of The Glass Dream Game. Received in a dream, it is a name without origin or conclusion—no alpha, no omega. “Amen” signifies the union of opposing forces, the sacred and the profane. As Æmen, the artist operates within a context where creation and destruction are understood as inseparable. 

Joshua Hagler is the artist’s name of origin and former working identity. After more than twenty years of painting, that work is complete. He now lives a private life in New Mexico, valuing the tangible world of daily experience over abstraction or public explanation. Hagler no longer seeks continuation; Æmen Ededéen carries forward the work that extends beyond a single entity.

Nihil documents through raw, poetic vision, a body of site-specific installations realized across nine locations in New Mexico, guided by nine self-defined artistic tenets. As art historian David Anfam observes, “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” The publication records a singular artistic vision in which multiple times and places converge within a single moment.

Together, the book signing and exhibition mark both an ending and a continuation: the culmination of Joshua Hagler’s work, and the ongoing play of Æmen Ededéen within The Glass Dream Game.