Séptico I is a direct visual immersion into the bodily microcosm and the encrypted secrets that reside within the fluids of our identity. Using a rich combination of acrylic and pastel on canvas, the artist constructs a suspended ecosystem that simulates a cellular or cinematic space. The composition is dominated by a light gray, biomorphic silhouette that floats at the heart of the piece, functioning as a static nucleus or stem cell. Franco uses paint to manifest the transition between the biological micro-universe and the massive immensity of collective space.
DNA is genetic information, hidden and encrypted in body fluids. Veiled data that we load, that we do not know and that someone knows how to decipher. Such specifications characterize us in our concrete individuality, make us unrepeatable and yet resist us. That chain of molecules constitutes a conglomerate of clues that someone elucidates because we do not know how to read it. We do not know the links that make up that nucleic acid that delineates us and characterizes us genetically. Curious phenomenon of not having access to such precise and accurate data about oneself. They skimp on us, they deny us despite having more authority than anyone to know their own characteristics. The geneticist, the scientist, is the one who can illustrate our exact and unique genetic conformation. We are carriers of a key that identifies us but we do not know. Alec Franco's DNA work inquires about this secret and inaccessible figure and displays these nucleic acid segments from color, shape and texture. DNA visually and plastically explores the morphology of our genetic sequence. Franco's series investigates that cryptography, its textures and nuances in a tension between the hidden hereditary transmission we carry and the manifested and displayed visually by his work. It raises the horror and emptiness of the encounter with oneself while his palette proposes the fullness and joyful plethora of those who reach self-knowledge, overcoming the initial horror of the encounter with their own identity and uniqueness that we carry without certainties. DNA proposes a way to access that knowledge that is elusive to us by another way, the artistic one.
Contemporary abstract painting that captures a hypnotic universe of particle and cellular fluids. From GEN/ADN series. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach
