She glued her eye to the blind pupil of the thin, glittering object. The thread passes through the eye without being damaged. She connects the tiny opening left by the needle in the skin, as fine as a tiny peephole through which to peer, to the palaces and buildings that populate her inner space.
I am the pen that draws the architecture of your memory
I am the ink in my veins that gives birth to the creatures of your nightmares and dreams
I am the sulphur and the flower, a circle
A cycle that renews itself
Between two heartbeats, the tears of my subterranean river find the sea that waters your anguish but also the sea that sets it free
Sharp as a thorn, swift as a razor, a brush dipped in me caresses your deliverance

Alison Flora paints and draws on canvas and paper. Her colour palette comes in shades of purple and vermilion, sometimes tending towards light pink, cherry red, wine-red or even earth tones, when time has worked the material. Her precise, often sinuous line gives life to spectral figures that are familiar to us because they have haunted us since childhood and since the origins of all civilisations: monsters that sow fear but can embody benevolence or protection, chimeras resurrected from medieval iconography or inspired by heroic fantasy, but also forms inherited from the world of black metal and the symbolist artists of the late 19th century. The artist’s body, the traces of his physical involvement, are palpable in the totality of his drawings and paintings. Like a deposit or spring, it provides the main organic material to which salt is added to preserve the colour. The blood can only be drawn on condition that the artist takes care of his physical body and respects the time needed to allow his own body to produce enough vital liquid. A cycle is thus set up, consisting of a period of rest and recuperation of the flesh, alternating with a phase of puncturing the substantial humour, the transmutations of which we observe here in images and works. “Solve & Coagula”, the title of the artist’s first solo exhibition at the DS Galerie, refers to a quest to balance opposing forces through transformation, resulting in the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Also known as the Great Alchemical Work, the process of creating the philosopher’s stone can be likened to the creation of a work of art. Both are emanations of the spirit modelling material reality in search of a form of transcendence. Thus, the first phase, the work in black, is placed under the sign of Saturn, lead, mercury and all that is dark. Like a house of cards, certainties waver and collapse. It’s time for the dissolution of matter, the dismemberment of knowledge, disorder, and a face-to-face encounter with the unconscious. To be reborn, a certain violence and death are necessary: things burn and are consumed. Like a bone freed and cleansed of all its remains, the work in white is characterised by its clarity. Under the sign of the moon, silver and the white peony, this stage corresponds to the return to life and the triumph of essence over chaos. Lastly, the work in red symbolises the union of opposing forces and the birth of the cornerstone. Under the sign of the Sun and copper, this is a fusion of opposites, stabilising a potential, living energy like a beating heart. Alison Flora is developing a body of work in which the quest for a form of catharsis to expiate the sorrows and traumas of the past manifests itself through the singularity of the medium employed and the embodiment of fears. Her latest blood paintings are accompanied at the DS galerie by musical performances and a floral installation: the exhibition reads like a gift of self offered by the artist - material and physical, but also spiritual - to the viewer. The blossoming of life, the pulsating chalice containing the living, and the violence that can guide the birth of beauty or happiness, are joined, to better experience them, by the memory, still so close, of death. Then the cycle begins again.

Text by| Ana Mendoza Aldana