When the Invisible touches the Surface
When the Invisible Touches the Surface
The Dock
Leitrim, Ireland
Photos Credit: Ros Kavanagh
In When the Invisible Touches the Surface, Caline Aoun presents constructed environments that render visible the forces continuously shaping our surroundings. Through condensation, heat transfer, sunlight, electronic devices and organic cycles, the works capture transitional states in which boundaries between natural and artificial processes become unstable.
Across the exhibition, materials accumulate, dissipate and transform in response to temperature, light and their immediate environment. In Artificial Dew, industrially produced monochrome aluminium surfaces are brought below freezing point, allowing humidity in the air to appear as dew and frost. A natural phenomenon is thus artificially choreographed, producing surfaces that continually change with their surroundings.
In Measuring Entropy, fallen pine needles are accumulated and transferred into paper pulp, leaving fossil-like traces of organic matter. The work connects cycles of growth and decay with questions around paper, obsolescence and environmental vulnerability. In Relying on the Sun, copper-covered windows absorb sunlight and transform it into heat, turning the architectural boundary between inside and outside into an interface for energy transfer. In Radiant Data, a copper cast conceals an iPad streaming live data; its computational activity becomes perceptible only through the subtle warmth transmitted to the metal.
Together, the works operate as dynamic diagrams of temperature and energy. Continuously altered by thermodynamic forces, they blur distinctions between human intervention and natural processes, making otherwise invisible exchanges of heat, matter and information physically perceptible.
