Aberrations, 2009

These two images represent the oldest artworks I am showing here. There are photographic reproductions of faces on call girl advertisements posted in telephone boxes around London's Tottenham Court Road. The images were reproduced using a large format camera with a magnifying glass as its lens. The lens was in fact only millimeters away from the surface of the postcards. This and the uncorrected optical qualities of the lens produced a focused picture only in the centre of the image while the rest quickly dissolves into blurriness.

The women are transfixing the viewer hidden behind what appears to be a veil. This 'veil', however, turns out to be the very substance the faces are made of. They reside completely within the graphics of the halftone dots of which the images are composed, although optically it seems hard to believe that there are no 'hidden greys' in between the black dots, in which the flesh and skin could be anchored. The sexual desire, as which these advertisements were constructed, thus falls in one with the spectator's desire for the sheer existence of the substance of the face - be it imagined.

The work still awaits completion to this day. I would like to silk-screen the images onto very thin paper in a limited edition of a few hundred. The posters should be stacked on two low pedestals and sold from that heap. Should the occasion arise I will produce these editions.