Dominic Garcia, Laura Lee, Pornprasert Khanthawichai, Natsuho Takita
Being porous, human skin is easily inscribed. This is not always a deliberate act of decoration: the body can be inscribed quite by accident. A cut to the skin shows just how fragile flesh can be. Human skin is a sensitive site of exchange between the inside and the outside, or as Elizabeth Grosz has noted incisions and orifices articulate an opposition between the body's exterior and interior.
Skin and its inscriptions form a landscape that signifies information about, and to, the body. As a surface or container, skin not only reveals the architectural veneer of the body, but also various racial, social and sexual markings. What if skin is removed from its corporeal associations, and used instead as an architectural metaphor? A tenuous cartography, skin can refer to layers of culturally inscribed meanings. 'Showcase' features the work of four artists who present metaphorical 'skins' that displace the 'body', representing the exchange between interior and exterior bodies of knowledge.
Dominic Garcia's series of highly minimal works, Symmetry Type, presents an appositional nexus between black and white, touch and vision. Symmetry Type is comprised of four framed images that conceal their meanings from touch, like an authoritative museum exhibit. A split screen of black and white is meticulously framed, referring to a Minimalism of neutral oppositions. The glass of the frame shields these works from touch, and protects the interior from exterior violation. The formal elegance of Symmetry Type is disrupted by Braille Labeller, a sheet of plastic indexed with braille markings. While SymmetryType places tactility off -limits, Braille Labeller is a palimpsest that is erotically charged, like human skin, inscribed with the accumulation of quotidian meanings. Ultimately, Garcia destabilises