Pearl and Its Deformation

61x61 cm

oil paint, marble powder, acrylics, wax, and wooden panel

“Every pearl begins as an irritation.”

This series interrogates value through surfaces of desire. The first work juxtaposes lunar craters with pearl's silky smoothness in recursive mise en abyme—nature's imperfection mirrored against cultivated luxury, each reflecting the other in endless regress. The second painting submerges the pearl within its own distorted form, immersed in pearlescent nylon-like textures that render it as landscape rather than object.

Where does value anchor itself? In the pearl's natural formation or its commodified sheen? In geological time or market circulation? The works suspend this question between states: the cratered moon and the smooth pearl collapse into one another, while deformation transforms the precious object into abstract terrain. Like the pearl itself—formed through irritation, valued through rarity, circulated as currency—these paintings ask whether worth resides in origin, surface, or the systems that frame our looking.

oil paint, marble powder, acrylics, wax, and wooden panel