FLASH: Skin as Phenomenological Palimpsest

"Flash" is the name for tattoo designs purchased off of the wall at the parlor. Begun in 2003, the Flash series combines imagery and text represented as "tattoos" along with trompe l'oeil representations of the phenomenology of human skin including aging, injury, and healing.

Skin can and does serve as a site of personal, cultural and social complexity. It is in fact a barrier demarcating the internal and external world while simultaneously chronicling the phenomenology of that separation. Bruises or scabs provide evidence of the abject human condition while equating themselves readily to the mark making process of the painter. Self-imposed marks such as tattoos record the subject's intervention into the human condition on at least its surface, the skin. Whether a result of injury or augmentation, each mark once made is subject to change through natural processes such as healing or aging that alter the original quality of the mark over time.

Through wry juxtapositions of images, textual references, and materials, these works become sites for the intersection of multiple processes and phenomena reflecting the complexity of human experience, itself, while asking the viewer to engage in some "viewing forensics." As such, the Flash Series represents the phenomenological palimpsest.