Video

The Saturated Well of Baptism

1991
Assemblage with cast concrete and fly attractant or flammable gel
Assemblage with ferrofluid and electromagnet
39 x 47 x 22 inches
Black oil sinks and rises in a spiked pattern at intervals.
Collection of Herb Giddeon

The amazing ferrofluid is a recent discovery consisting of oil impregnated with minute iron oxide particles; the properties of which allow the fluid to react to a pulsing magnetic field (an electromagnet is below the fluid) in many unique ways. In this application it plays the role of baptismal holy water so saturated that it has become black—alive with the sins that it has absorbed: a likely scenario, in my opinion, were such a concept possible. The notion of removing ones shortcomings with holy water is to me as absurd as learning to read by sleeping with a book under your pillow.

BRUDNIAK

The Saturated Well of Baptism is a concrete font filled with oil saturated with iron filings, whose liquid surface regularly erupts into a shape too regular to be a flower or an anemone, too firm to seem like what it is: fluid induced to rise by magnetic force.

ELIZABETH MCBRIDE – Art News