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By Anthony J. Thorne | eine stille Hommage an J.A.T.
At first glance, Asil Anom appears to be a cryptic artistic invention, a name shrouded in mystery. However, when read in reverse, it unveils its hidden reference: Mona Lisa. This simple inversion serves as the gateway to a body of work that engages with themes of mirror, inversion, and reflection while moving beyond mere homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s most enigmatic portrait. Rather than being a citation, Asil Anom represents a profound transformation.
Leonardo da Vinci, known for his masterful painting, was also an anatomist, a scientist, and a dissector of the human form. The power of the Mona Lisa lies in its ambiguity—a face that withholds answers, existing in the liminal space between smile and sorrow, masculinity and femininity, life and idea. Its composition unfolds in layers: from skull to muscle, from skin to expression, from portrait to myth.
This same layered complexity forms the conceptual foundation of Asil Anom, not in terms of style or technique but in thought. The series constructs its images through a digitally composed structure, arranged across four intertwined visual planes, each carrying its own historical, biographical, and cultural weight:
Roman emperor portraits – imposing stone witnesses to male-coded power.
Plaster casts of the artist’s own body – fragmented, vulnerable, and intimate.
A modeled skull – not as a memento mori but as the underlying architectural base of all form.
Contemporary female portraits – faces that embody presence, identity, and self-awareness.
The result is not a traditional portrait but an archaeological visual structure—a composition that integrates memory, gender, and projection. These images resist easy interpretation; they refuse to be passively “read.” Instead, they assert their presence as independent image-beings, entities that contain their own origins or perhaps something beyond naming.
The reversal of the title is not merely a linguistic trick; it is a conceptual statement: to look backward in order to move forward. This is not an act of quotation but of transformation. It does not seek to destroy historical imagery but to liberate the gaze, to shift the perception of history from illustration to inscription.
In Asil Anom, the body is not conventionally depicted but pressed, mirrored, and layered. The skull is no longer an endpoint; it is a structural beginning. The woman is not an object to be gazed upon but the origin, the presence, and the catalyst for a new visual logic.
This series resists quick consumption. It defies easy explanation and instead demands to be experienced. It operates as a visual form of thought, one that embraces complexity and ambiguity, rejecting the comfort of resolution. And in doing so, it stands as a profoundly contemporary work—one that challenges, provokes, and invites us to see anew.
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