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.
Cápsula #2, 2022 From The Cápsula Series
Cápsula #2, 2022
From The GEN/ADN Series
Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 145 H x 90 W cm.
Unframed
Signed by artist
Alec Franco was born on August 7, 1972, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he currently resides. He has been a graphic designer since 1995. He began painting in 1991 and in 1993 he attended the drawing and airbrushing workshops of Ignacio Otero. His training continues in the workshops of Abstract Expressionism of Marco Otero, of Essentialism with Heriberto Zorrilla and Helena Distéfano. By 2012 he deepened his technique with Sergio Bazán and later perfected it in the clinic of Fabiana Barreda and that of María Carolina Baulo who was curator of one of his latest samples Harena. He has been an editor together with other artists, writers, and designers of Hoornik Collection Art Magazine since 2016. He has made numerous samples between 2011 and 2017: at The Redchurch Gallery in Shoreditch, London in 2012-2013; Stupid perfection at the Borges Cultural Center in 2013; at the Buenos Aires Design in 2015; in the same year in the Honorable Senate of the Argentine Nation and in the Recoleta Cultural Center of Buenos Aires; the following year at the San Isidro Open Studio. The most recent: Harena, was exhibited at the Newbery Central Gallery and the Esteban Lisa Foundation in 2017.
