Catalysis – 2005
This portfolio of work was an exploration to determine the origins of lust and also an attempt to create something sacred from the profane.
I revisited my own personal history, cataloged my earliest erotic awakenings up to the present and then referenced the source material.
The work was presented at a scale that approximated the human form. I fabricated two aluminum bars and secured them to the top and bottom in an effort to echo the religious iconography of illuminated manuscripts or Torah scrolls.
Every image here was appropriated from pornography downloaded from the Internet. Not the obvious bits and pieces. A typical sample of imagery that I began with was the lacing of a corset or folded arms and legs. If you imagine a prurient shape or form in these images, it is of your own construction.
As I rearranged each component, I was reminded of the spiral ladder of DNA encoded in each cell of my blood and I began to reconsider the concept of free will.
Can one escape these two chains of repeating nucleotides?
Is this desire?