Fsision

A play on the term fission (the process by which certain organisms reproduce asexually), Meres’s Fsision considers the splits and entanglements—sexually, imagistically, and materially—that define predominant conceptions of nature and, by extension, inform how we make sense of ourselves.

In his film Fsision, 2015, Meres analyzes the life of microscopic planarians (hermaphroditic flatworms with an unusual ability to regenerate lost body parts and to divide themselves into differentiated worms) as a perspective for reproduction and gender beyond the anthropocentric view. In the film, the planarians drift in a petri dish, rubbing against glass and one another, bathed in varying light sources that diffract the visual contours of the space in which they exist, altering our perception of their size and location. Shot at a laboratory at the New School, Meres’s Fsision is a quiet and complex essay into the production of difference—and the notion of individuality as it forms in an alien territory that nevertheless closely resembles ours. In reproducing by splitting into two or many, planarians offer alternative views to human conceptions of identity as well as assumptions about originality and authenticity. This inquiry is extended in his series of silicone sculptures that hang from the ceiling and refer, in their torqued, elongated form, to the bodies of mutating planarians. Cast with synthetic testosterone and performance enhancing supplements designed to transform the human body, the works are draped on hardware extended from the ceiling and extend the muscle-less and one-dimensional planarian form to a fleshy manifold state.

A series of large photographs included in the exhibition continue Meres’ inquiry on representations of nature and scientific imagery. The photos—taken in the flooded forest of the Amazon and the geothermal Hveragerði region of Iceland—glisten and shimmer with wet life, the exact dimensions and features of which are altered and obscured. Printed and mounted on metallic surfaces, the works draw on the aesthetics of scientific authority and reconsider the objective quality of detached observation.

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