Ablutions

Patrick Raynaud’s »Ablutions« consist of macrophotographs of body parts—an eye, a number of fingers, a hairy chest—which are mounted in colored plastic bowls. Light sources inside these bowls illuminate the photographs.

At first glance Raynaud’s installation alienates, presenting a human body as if it has been dissected to create a series of medical preparations. Cables connect the bowls (and supply the light sources with power), but they only succeed in linking the individual parts to create a superficial unity. Raynaud, who studied literature and film, made an intense study of the human body in the early 1990s. His works examine the antithesis of life and death, depicting vulnerability and mortality, thus seizing on traditional motifs from the history of art.

Like an anatomist, the artist separates individual features—but not organs—in order to show them in the light of his installation. However, while the physician illuminates them from without, here the body parts radiate from within as if they possess some elusive meaning which transcends the real body.