Collisions: Mark McDean + Julie Clarke (02.05.2012)

Untitled: Mark McDean May 2012

I am favoring the oval template as it reads quasi Victorian (the portrait, the jewellery object). In response to Julie Clarke's Vault containing collection and cataloging, I tried to take a micro view and construct a work, which had the quality of a 'specimen'.  The image is a scanned piece of HIV cell growth scanned and mounted on watercolor paper. The adhesive dots are re-colored, however, the blue dots are borrowed from my obsession with necklaces. I attempted a random scattering of the dots to shake up the formality of the scientific image. (Mark McDean)

When I received Mark's artwork in the post yesterday I immediately thought that it was an egg containing images of spores. I was also reminded of the many drawings did in the early 90s of the alchemical egg - a symbol of symbolic death and rebirth. Here is one example from my 1991 visual journal.

Alchemical egg: Julie Clarke 1991: drawing on paper

Mark's artwork above does look Jewell-like with an opalesque affect. The central image is glossy and the placement of the dots makes the oval take on a slightly curved affect similar to a precious stone in the middle of a dress-ring or brooch. However, I like to think about Mark's image in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the Body Without Organs:

The body without organs is an egg: it is crisscrossed with axes and thresholds, with latitudes and longitudes and geodesic lines, traversed by gradients marking the transitions and the becomings, the destinations of the subject developing along these particular vectors. (Anti-Oedipus, p. 1).