Incision

Incision: An exhibition of photography, drawing, and sculpture by Sean Batchelor, Del Lumanta, Isobel Parker Philip and Daryl Prondoso that dissects both the cut and that which it exposes.

‘Incision’ is a surgical term, referring to a cut that perforates the surface of a body’s skin or flesh. It is an entry point, a means through which the inside and the outside, the internal body and the external body, collapse into one another. It is through an incision that we are able to see things that are invisible to the naked eye, things that are concealed and hidden away – the shapes of our organs and the patterns of our cells.

A cut – an incision – is violent. It splits and ruptures a surface, dividing it in two, yet it is also generative. Through an incision we witness the emergence of the invisible and the internal. An incision allows the unknown to rise to the surface and to slip out of the cracks.

This exhibition directs its attention to the cut and what it lays bare. Here paper has replaced the body – it is paper that is being sliced open, not flesh. Paper has become punctured and perforated skin. Batchelor, Lumanta, Philip and Prondoso have each anatomized the moment of the cut, the split, and its aftermath – the emergence of the invisible and the unknown.

Incision is not concerned with the ‘cut’ as a simple action, as an abrasive gesture, but as a complex phenomenon that prioritizes the reveal and the probe as much as it does the penetration and the split.
By metaphorically aligning paper with human skin we are not only exploring how the body is affected, or rather transformed, by an incision, but we are investigating the fragile nature of paper itself. For while paper is almost exclusively treated as a surface on which images and words are placed it too can be opened up and dissected. It too has wounds.