SOLAR MAX
2002-2023
This series is based on images of activity on the sun's surface: sunspots, flares and explosions captured by specialized telescopes and probes. They are part of a body of work that appropriates the images that come from the visual language of science, recovering the capacity of art to represent nature in its own terms. In this case these images are transferred to the technique of plumaria, an art form whose origin is in pre-Hispanic Mexico, by Luis Guillermo Olay, a master craftsman who is part of a family that has been dedicated to feather work for three generations. In Solar Max the featherwork reproduces an image of solar activity obtained by technical and scientific means, adopting it as a version of the sublime. By being mounted on a traditional Japanese roll of silk, rice paper and wood, this translation puts the image in the context of another foreign visual and material culture. This amalgam maintains in a delicate balance the scientific image of a distant phenomenon out of all human proportions, its representation in an ancestral technique of organic origin and unique tactile characteristics, and its presentation under the appearance of foreign pictorial tradition.
2002-2023
This series is based on images of activity on the sun's surface: sunspots, flares and explosions captured by specialized telescopes and probes. They are part of a body of work that appropriates the images that come from the visual language of science, recovering the capacity of art to represent nature in its own terms. In this case these images are transferred to the technique of plumaria, an art form whose origin is in pre-Hispanic Mexico, by Luis Guillermo Olay, a master craftsman who is part of a family that has been dedicated to feather work for three generations. In Solar Max the featherwork reproduces an image of solar activity obtained by technical and scientific means, adopting it as a version of the sublime. By being mounted on a traditional Japanese roll of silk, rice paper and wood, this translation puts the image in the context of another foreign visual and material culture. This amalgam maintains in a delicate balance the scientific image of a distant phenomenon out of all human proportions, its representation in an ancestral technique of organic origin and unique tactile characteristics, and its presentation under the appearance of foreign pictorial tradition.