Dove Allouche, Sunflower_45, 2016

Pure silver and tin base on unexposed Cibachrome paper mounted on aluminium
127 x 130 cm
Framed 143 x 147 x 5 cm
Unique

The tension between light and darkness and the fragility of the image is explored in Allouche’s Sunflower series. Borrowing the technique of mirror making, the artist coated Cibachrome paper with layers of tin and silver. This process is completed in the dark, similar to the artist’s ambrotypes of caves, and the coating inevitably varies across the surface of each work. When the sheet is brought out of the dark room, light exposes the photographic paper in different degrees, turning brown sections that received less tin and silver and revealing traces of the artists’ movements as he applied the metals to the paper. The result is neither an image that records the world nor a mirror that reflects it.