1 book composed of three sandblasted and inked tempered glass panels, mounted on an articulated aluminum structure, with a felt sleeve featuring silkscreened text
3 texts by Vicenç Altaió
3 images by Joan Fontcuberta
1 silkscreened aluminum box
Asking for and donating blood is a gesture dense with symbols and emotion. Its symbolic charge mirrors the process itself: these three images, created with the blood of loved ones, speak of transparency and opacity — of matter resisting the passage of light, as a metaphor for truth. The Hemograms ultimately lead us to reflect on the nature of the trace and the vestige, and therefore on the document itself as evidence.
Only with effort will the viewer begin to recognize the origin of images that seem closer to a fantastical imagination than to the depiction of something as vital and familiar as blood. And only through that same effort — of thought and of sensitivity — might we attempt to identify any origin at all: God, science, freedom.
An aluminum box contains a fold-out triptych book made of glass, felt, and blood. The text, written by Vicenç Altaió, is structured as three decalogues: one dedicated to God, one to science, and one to freedom. When the triptych is closed, the three texts overlap, enclosing and holding the blood within.
The images, conceived by Joan Fontcuberta, originate from three drops of blood donated by three different individuals — friends — fixed onto a strip of transparent acetate. Once coagulated, each drop becomes a photographic matrix. The image is then engraved onto glass using a sandblasting technique: the abrasion renders the surface porous, allowing pigment to penetrate and fix itself. The glass is subsequently inked with a blood-red pigment, as if it were an engraving plate. The blood — opaque and warm — is thus fixed onto a transparent, cold support.
This work was presented in 2006 at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) by Joan Fontcuberta, Vicenç Altaió, and Tinta Invisible.