Alison Flora’s Solve et Coagula at DS Galerie in Paris is a transformative exploration of art as alchemy, where blood and pigment dissolve and renew, embodying cycles of life, death, and catharsis.
With a palette steeped in purples, vermilions, and earthy tones, Flora’s works transcend the surface, drawing from the depths of medieval iconography, black metal aesthetics, and symbolist traditions to evoke chimeric figures—at once haunting and protective. Her sinuous lines trace these forms with precision, revealing their essence as familiar yet otherworldly, as if unearthed from the subconscious mind.
Central to Flora’s practice is her own body, a literal reservoir of creative material. Her blood, harvested cyclically to sustain her medium, becomes a bridge between the physical and the metaphysical. This act—both visceral and transcendent—grounds the works in a corporeal reality while imbuing them with profound emotional resonance. By blending salt into this living pigment, Flora ensures the longevity of her material while preserving its vivid vitality. Her paintings, like relics, document the process of decay and renewal, creating an evocative dialogue between time, memory, and creation.
The exhibition’s titular reference to the alchemical process of Solve et Coagula frames Flora’s work as a philosophical inquiry. Through distinct phases of dissolution (the dark work of Saturn), purification (the lunar clarity of the white peony), and synthesis (the solar unity of copper), she guides viewers through an aesthetic journey paralleling the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. These stages, marked by the symbolic interplay of death and rebirth, resonate as catharsis—an expiation of sorrow and trauma embodied in her spectral imagery and bleeding colors.
Accompanied by floral installations and live musical performances, Solve et Coagula transforms the gallery into a space of spiritual and sensory immersion. Flora’s gift to her audience is one of material and metaphysical duality: a visceral testament to the beauty that emerges from confronting life’s fragility. In this cycle, death is not an end but a beginning—a reminder of the eternal rhythms that shape existence and creation.
