“I thought about alchemy, the turning of substances with invisible meaning into something physical and tangible, rather like the faith the built this cathedral, with the cipher to its construction encoded in its sculptures. So it is with alchemy, concealing itself deep within the process.”
-Tacita Dean, 1995
In the work of Tacita Dean, there is a depth and breadth rare in art today. Her work does not service the media byte. We have to consider her as a writer, a radio producer, an object maker, a filmmaker, a drawer, an installation artist, an alchemist, a navigator. Her subjects range from beards, breasts, saints to boats and lighthouses. Her investigations are a series of corollaries between truth and fiction, video and film, subject and media, drawing and idea, science and art. Her obsession is an ambitious attempt to reveal the connective essence between these seemingly polarized opposites.