Secret Harmonies is a room-sized installation of life-size portraits of various flowers. Each piece is made of glazed English porcelain and affixed to the walls in random order, as though they had blown in from the garden.
Inspired from cut flowers from my garden outside my studio or purchased from florists or supermarkets, each sculpture is an attempt to portray the logic and imperfections of blossoms at their different stages of life, tracing their descent from budding to wilting.
One of the rewards of working from live models is revealing the intimate secrets of the five-petal rose, the complex arc of the lily, and the chaotic baroque logic of the carnation. Rendering these portraits allows me to process the beautiful chaos of the life cycle.
The title, Secret Harmonies, refers to a quote from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, “the hidden harmony is superior to the visible.” There are also a few non-flower elements added here: forks, ladders, spoons, etc, all of which highlight the intuitive and illogical dimension of flowers and thereby allows me tap into the unconscious, where the hidden order and disorder of all things reside.
