About Principium
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
Edvard Munch
Principium was inspired by the strange relationship we have with our bodies: while idolizing and relentlessly photographing the gym-sculpted outside we are still very uncomfortable around visions of its insides, nurtured by cinema and literature genres that feed upon gore and horror.
Principium was also heavily influenced by the iconography of the holy and supernatural, especially since it departs from illustrations of the dead, from anatomical compendia of centuries past, and brings them into surreal settings where they revel in rapture.
Principium uses photos of moving, agitated waters, frozen into stillness frozen in a fraction of second by the author’s camera, and used as a stage for actors traveling in time, from an analog to a digital world, from ancient medical, anatomical and natural sciences compendia, dating back to the 16th century, to the bright LED screens of the 21st century, draped in mystical tattoos and halos, covered with fauna and flora.
Principium draws inspiration from Alchemy, in its several stages and transformative power.
Alchemical Stages
- Calcination which is the identification of the ego process by recognizing and watching the egoistic mental, emotional and physical attributes that bind us.
- Dissolution is the process by which we burn our egoistic pains and fears in fire creating ash, washing away those long held beliefs that joined us with the ego mind.
- Separation is the stage whereby we see ourselves in two parts, the upper conscious higher mind and the lower temporal worldly body. Here we see truth from falsehood because of our new expanded view.
- Conjunction is the point at which we reveal the limitless and infinite greatest of the entire reality. It’s where we find our Path of illumination in the All and see that the gift of growing never ends. Here we begin to climb the ‘Ladder’ of the spiritual ascent and start entering new realms of conscious awareness.
- Putrefaction is the stage at which the anchor of the temporal bodies decays and we’re faced with its shadow. Here we clearly see the attributes that limit our attainment and we face them finally healing and accepting the ‘who we are’ here in this world – joining the upper and lower together.
- Distillation is about embracing a new form of existence connection and revelation that was not available before. This stage is very advanced, it creates within us a sense of true love and All. Here we become embedded into the structure of everything and we see ourselves in others. We ‘Love our Neighbor as Ourselves’ because we truly don’t see a separation any longer, also called the Philosophers Stone.
- Coagulation is the Phoenix rising, the enlightened state of Buddha-hood. This state of Oneness transcends anything that can be explained by words and is the true merging with the Creator Force as One – the Elixir of Immortality.
Principium summarizes the concept of life eternal, as stated by Edvard Munch: “From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity”.
Principium is a series of 27 pieces, each of them containing the Latin (or Greek) text of its own principle (Principium).
All the pieces (click to view) are produced in high-resolution and materialised on a 1m x 1m canvas.
