Body Prints and Sculptures Statement
“…all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.” Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Whenever I see an image of one of the hand prints on the wall of the Paleolithic caves, or a picture from Yves Klein’s Anthropometry series, I think about the moment that the body (or the part of the body) made actual contact with the surface. Touch, as well as taste, is the most intimate of our senses. We can see at great distances (stars and galaxies), we can hear things a mile or two away (trains and airplanes) and can smell aromas within a building (the kitchen at the other end of the house). However, to touch an object or a person, they need to be within arm’s reach. This intimacy, this directness is what I believe to be the starting point of how we perceive the world. Our sight, hearing and smell can fool us into believing something that does not actually exist. These three modes of information need a medium to carry it to the sensing organ (hearing and smelling needs air and sight the light spectrum to travel). But to touch something is to experience it directly and to acknowledge its existence.