Abracadabra
Abracadabra re-creates the body in cut glass sheets, re-assembling them in an oak cabinet that, like a magician’s prop, is parted in the middle as if sawn in two. Looking into the ‘sawn off’ edge of the box, the viewer can look into the cavern like interior of the empty body. Being in the presence of the ghostly form in it’s glass case is akin to the experience of standing next to an open coffin, seeing and yet not seeing the occupant – the life-force having left, an unreal mannequin remains. Here the body is discernible, but untouchable, unknowable, ghostly. It seems as if it somehow exists in a different dimension to our own. The title of the work reminds us that this is a ‘trick’, that art is in fact a form of trickery – an illusion, but also that our system of justice, morality, ethics – are also trickery and fake illusion.
