Blood Diamond

Carl Rowe's serigraph Blood Diamond is a minimalist gesture. With the help of serigraphy a charming pop-like form can easily be given to any pictorial material - advertising pictures, product labels, tabloid headlines or newspaper photos. At first glance, Rowe's work seems to be a striking, unequivocal silkscreen of an anonymous jewellery store's advertisement. However, it differs significantly from Andy Warhol's early supermarket philosophy, because Blood Diamond is printed with oxidized blood. Rowe thereby steps out of the early Warhol Factory, which produced glamorous series of pop art, and arrives in the world of oxidized paintings that are typical of Warhol's later work. The aura of unique individual works, which Walter Benjamin discussed in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, has been restored to them by the bodily fluids. Instead of mass-produced paints, Rowe loves to use customized mixtures comprised of herbs, spices and blood, thereby connecting art to culinary skills, and art to witchcraft. Blood Diamond is also a semantic prank - the expensive diamond ring in the middle of the page turns out to be a symbol that represents nothing, while the red background serves not only the colour symbolism of the connections between the ring and love - the diamond and blood - but actually is blood. It therefore turns out that the incidental is more meaningful than the central. Liisa Kaljula Art Historian, Art Museum of Estonia Tallin XV Print Triennial Exhibition Catalogue ISBN 978-9949-21-547-8