Black Tide

Human aggression against nature and humanity itself has always been a narrative in my work. In my recent works, I chose to extend the use of fire from merely a creative technique into the narrative itself. Fire was the first element that allowed mankind to significantly change its environment and leave its mark on nature. It enabled man to create and to destroy. I use fire to create specific elements and to fuse them into others. The blowtorch is literally used as a brush, leaving its mark on the different materials and forcing them to respond in their own specific way. Working with fire is an uncontrolled process, for the most part, and leads to different results depending on many external factors. In some cases, this method actually destroys parts of the piece, rendering them useless, but this is intrinsic to the process.

A dominant subject in my work is the engine whose invention not only enabled great achievements in human history, but also facilitated horrific disasters. The engine is the basis for urban development, and as such becomes a symbol of man’s progress, but it can also be overtaken by organic creations reclaiming their territory in a never-ending power struggle between humanity and nature.

As with my previous pieces, my most recent works are multi-layered. The base layer is aluminum mesh, sewn together like a quilt made of individual patches, creating a topographical map representing the landscape. Laid upon and forcibly meshed into it is a drawing of a power source (an engine, turbine or reactor) that is the infrastructure of an urban landscape. The raw materials I use, both natural and man-made are also symbolic; sheet metal, Cinefoil, transparency film, paper and straw are fused together by fire becoming inseparable.

The pieces grow organically on the surface and into the space around them, extending mechanical tendrils, a hybrid creation of nature’s veins and man’s infrastructure, each trying to conquer space and resources to survive. Their tendrils transverse the different layers, originating in some and terminating in others, and it is the nature of this struggle for survival which is so violent.