The Kiss - Self Portrait, 2012

Maria Jose Arjona  

This artwork presents a striking image of a person enveloped in a transparent, ethereal material, creating an evocative interplay between vulnerability and strength. The figure's pose exudes both grace and tension, suggesting a delicate struggle or transformative emergence. The wispy fabric envelops the subject, producing an angelic or chrysalis-like appearance, hinting at themes of metamorphosis or transcendence. The soft lighting accentuates the gentle contours of the body while diffusing the boundaries between the figure and the surrounding space. This choice of composition invites viewers to contemplate the ambiguity of presence and absence, material and immaterial. The artwork's minimalistic background contrasts with the complexity of its central figure, emphasizing themes of isolation and introspection. Overall, this piece is a compelling exploration of the human condition, capturing an exquisite moment of transition or self-discovery.

The Kiss is an exhibition mapping a system uniting two bodies. It is a gesture, magnified by the use of sound, emerging from the action of kissing and intensified by the working presence of the performer’s body. Throughout the space each element is weaved by simple associations between body (present and absent), sound, and various materials which are all used to reveal the nature of this binding gesture: kissing. The series does not display one privileged moment of the kiss – rather, it dislocates it through its many representations, underlining in this way an aural intensity which catalyses the possibility of an image of kissing within each spectator. The series could be also perceived as a microscope slide where some of the components of kissing are exalted and isolated in order to better understand them. It is not a rendering, it is not a choreographed sequence, it doesn’t function within linear time. But it proves the force contained in a simple gesture (kissing) giving it simultaneously a voice and an expanded corporeality.