Bronze hands: Gestures, 2005
Photo: Rafael Goldchain
This series of bronze hands are made using jeltrate alginate moulds on my hands. I immerse my hand or hands in the jeltrate holding it still for several minutes until the jeltrate sets and then I carefully remove my hand(s) without tearing the mould. The process is very direct and satisfying because, like a snapshot, the results are immediate. The next steps are trickier. A wax positive is made from the jeltrate negative and then the more time consuming, tedious process of bronze casting begins. The jeltrate mould captures minute details of the hand’s topography of skin texture, wrinkles, pores. The impulse to freeze the gesture is like my need to freeze a moment of observation in a photograph. Maybe this is documentation as archive and history; documentation as proof of existence, documentation as time stopped. The project proposes to explore how the gesture of tension can be expressed with sculptures of disembodied hands. Images of hands are ubiquitous historically in paintings and sculptures as are the tropes of hand gestures praying, pleading, clutching, grasping, grabbing, clenching, holding, caressing, waving, grieving, negating, inviting. What do these gestures signify? How do we read them? What do they suggest about the absent body? This hand-made investigation will continue.
Photo: Rafael Goldchain
This series of bronze hands are made using jeltrate alginate moulds on my hands. I immerse my hand or hands in the jeltrate holding it still for several minutes until the jeltrate sets and then I carefully remove my hand(s) without tearing the mould. The process is very direct and satisfying because, like a snapshot, the results are immediate. The next steps are trickier. A wax positive is made from the jeltrate negative and then the more time consuming, tedious process of bronze casting begins. The jeltrate mould captures minute details of the hand’s topography of skin texture, wrinkles, pores. The impulse to freeze the gesture is like my need to freeze a moment of observation in a photograph. Maybe this is documentation as archive and history; documentation as proof of existence, documentation as time stopped. The project proposes to explore how the gesture of tension can be expressed with sculptures of disembodied hands. Images of hands are ubiquitous historically in paintings and sculptures as are the tropes of hand gestures praying, pleading, clutching, grasping, grabbing, clenching, holding, caressing, waving, grieving, negating, inviting. What do these gestures signify? How do we read them? What do they suggest about the absent body? This hand-made investigation will continue.
