ROCKSKULL
Collected from the fossil-rich beaches of the Vaches Noires in Normandy, the rocks depicted in ROCKSKULL are ordinary geological objects shaped by natural forces over immense periods of time. The project does not seek to interpret these objects, but rather to submit them to a process of cultural transformation.
Through photography, enlargement and mechanical black-and-white halftone reproduction, the rocks are displaced from their natural context and presented as images. The photographic treatment introduces a degree of distance and abstraction, while retaining the physical presence, texture and weight of the original forms. The rocks remain recognisable as geological matter, yet begin to operate within a different visual and cultural register.
The title ROCKSKULL acts as a catalyst. Rather than categorising the rocks, it stimulates the imagination, encouraging associations with skulls, relics, fossils and other symbolic forms. In this respect the project enters a territory explored by artists such as Damien Hirst, where mortality, permanence and the persistence of but leaves space for them to emerge through the encounter between image and viewer.
The greys, muted contrasts and absence of colour resist spectacle. Like weathered stone, dust, sand or beach grass, the palette remains close to the material world from which the work originates. In this sense the project shares something of Rick Owens’ understanding of colour, where neutral tones act as a counterpoint to the living body. Human presence is supplied by the viewer – through perception, memory, imagination and ultimately mortality itself.
“The image is printed, but the time embedded within it is geological.”