"It must of necessity be concluded that the blood is driven into a round by a circular motion in living creatures, and that it moves perpetually..." William Harvey (1578 - 1657) from On the Motion of the Heart and Blood
It would have been impossible to anticipate the full effect of seeing a sheet of blood, preserved in plexiglass and resin. In the same way that Kubrick confronts us with our own gaping mortality in the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the sheer vastness of all time and space, Eagles' work is an equal if more internal confrontation with life and death. He creates an arresting representation of our vital fluid, our life force: here it is before us, captured, glorified, decimated.
In BLOOD DUST 4 the volume of blood caught in resin is so great that all we can see is a smooth, black surface seemingly absorbing all the light that strikes it. It is only on closer inspection that the familiar crimson gives itself up to us, lost in the blackness shimmering like crushed velvet, the deep red of life, a richness only to be glimpsed.
My favorite three pieces, ROZE 18, 17 & 14 are displayed as a tryptic, each standing large at roughly 1mx2m.
ROZE 18 made of blood, gauze, plexiglass and UV resin, has an extraordinary color range from black to brilliant ruby. The fluid mosaic pattern has a strong sense of organic creation, of living tissues, the shifting arrangement of life.
ROZE 17 almost a negative version of 18 has the addition of blood dust (fine, potentially decomposed matter). The focus of 17 is the delicate trajectory of the gauze, vein like, cappilary, always an imperfect symmetry, the freely constructed grid of life. Streams and rivulets patterning the gauze, trapped in motion in the resin. The blood dust gives this pieces a less bold tone, brown creeps in, the whole is rust tinted.
We move with this rust closer to the brilliant, religious gold of the thick copper streams that course through ROZE 14, the only of the three to feature copper in it's construction. It is regal, hypnotic, awe-inspiring. The blood is thick and black once more, in sharp and excellent contrast to the golden pathways, the opposition is exquisite, precious.
As you step away from ROZE 14, the distance merges the streams, creating a greater sense of the gauze as a material, and here before us, an opulent blood-tapestry.
The continuation of this exhibition explored blood as death and ending. BARC20X20-1, LIFE FORCE 2011-1 and LFV are all constructions of burnt blood. A terrible ensnaring of our own frailty and mortality, what was so strong and resplendent is now decimated. These thin layers of blood are set in larger casing, allowing the light to filter through the entire, part scorched, layers showcasing it's, and subsequently our, fragile nature.
Natural order has ceased. Haphazard chaos rules.
How angry the hot blood death.
- Kate
-------------------------------------------
http://www.jordaneagles.com/
http://www.collegeofphysicians.org/mutter-museum/exhibitions/
Notes from the Mütter Museum on Eagles' methods:
"Through his self-invented process, Eagles encases the materials in plexiglass and UV resin and manipulates the texture, quality , and colour of blood. Eagles heats, dries, burns and pulverises the blood [...]. The resulting works preserve the blood - notoriously difficult to achieve [...]. Eagles has been creating multidimensional works with animal blood procured from slaughter houses for over a decade."
LOVED THIS TOO MUCH! Any one else in for 'bio-art'? x
