Alchemic Body Symbols 1998

ALCHEMIC BODY SYMBOLS

Continuing my research about the human body as material, Alchemic Body Symbols was an exercise of abstraction for which I documented with macro-photos the actions of flesh movements.

The resulting images were then edited digitally, simplifying them formally for a final printing using silk-screens in metallic colors represent certain elemental materials and the alchemy of the body.

This series of prints composes again an alphabet of abstract forms and symbols that translates the subconscious messages of our bodies, following the steps of Yves Klein and his Anthropometry practice, using the body as a stencil as a means of generating pictorial voids.

PHOTOS

My work is essentially about the human body and this work in San Francisco was made of macro-photos of parts of the body – for example, creases or wrinkles. I made macros embellishment with a very powerful lens which gets very close. From the photo I did photo-etching of each wrinkle. The outcome of this was turned into silkscreens, in metallic colors that represent alchemy, the alchemy of the body.

It is because the body itself is giving off messages through its parts, and forms symbols by this means, that my work is entitled Body Symbols. Accordingly, the Alchemist colors – gold, silver, copper, and black and white – form a part of this symbolic world, a universal language that we all possess, not only in our body, but also in our spirit and mind. It is the language of the subconscious that is dictating to us patterns of movement and what our souls want to express