I created Professore in 2008 as an alter ego, a second self, a kind of auto-collaboration for my art. The project is presented as an archive of photographs, drawings, sculptures and video pieces which record Professore’s dramatic experiments and explores the aesthetics of science. I am interested to see how Professore challenges perceptions of identity and social order, whilst raising issues regarding society’s innate trust in science and institutions. Professore is an enigma. He projects the qualities of a highly educated and respected scientist, yet his complex and bizarre experiments isolate him and ultimately leave him misunderstood. This larger than life character appears to dramatically oscillate between the extremes of experience and uncertainty, control and failure, or genius and insanity. Professore blurs the distinctions between fiction and fact. He takes on a profound existence of his own where fantasy and reality become virtually inseparable. His unconventional science can range from the fantastic to the banal, but is always treated with equal reverence and ironically comes across as plausible.
This work is also concerned with the duality of personality. The question arises whether Professore is simply a game of role play, or if the practice of taking on another identity implies deeper psychological issues. Which is the true personality that is emanating – that of the artist or Professore? And can one exist without the other? The collection includes both edition prints and unique works, produced in an array of alternative analogue processes. Despite the dubiousness of Professore’s science, this body of work has been produced using the most authentic and historical photographic techniques, such as glass plate negatives, bromoil prints, hand-coated silver gelatin and the Graffite process which I invented in 2010.
