Physical Thought / Sweat Archive
2012
Photographic documentation / sweat archive (metal tray, glass test tubes, rubber stoppers, paper labels and sweat)Dimensions variable
Physical Thought is a series of photographs that document a sweat archive that I generated and collected over the period of one year. The sweat was used as a base material to make artworks, demonstrating the artist as filter while exploring the transformation of matter and value. Using sweat as a metaphor for both art and work, the artworks balance on the threshold between human by-product and artistic product in order to more effectively observe the influences that define art, be they contextual, experiential or evaluative.
Downplaying the intention of the artist, the series highlights the power of our unconscious and the limitations of subjective experience in general. Referencing our evolved, innate capacity to communicate indirectly through pheromones in sweat, the work ultimately examines the physical embodiment of knowledge through both creation and cognition.
These Transformation Studies provide visual “before and after” documentation that juxtapose various substances that were ingested and transformed into sweat. While they principally counterpoint water with sweat, they also include a comparison between sweat and other common drinks; orange juice, coffee, milk and red wine.
