antidote collective

x-ra(y)ted portraits

"Know thyself!"

Since uttered, reportedly, by the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi some 2600 years ago (and probably before her), innumerable philosophers, mystics, religious leaders, gurus, artists and taxi drivers have imparted the same wisdom in their own way.

Who am I?

This is the resulting question asked by one heeding those words and one in which the same inner explorers have attempted to answer in their own way.

Artist Alexander de Cadenet's way came in 1996 via a self-portrait, sort of: an X-ray photograph of his skull. Shortly thereafter, he streamed the photons towards other subjects, creating a corpus of "Skull Portraits." "The original idea was to present an image of who the person was beyond the fa�ade as opposed to how the person appeared on the surface," the 29-year-old Londoner explains.

X-rays of skulls may seem only appropriate for Dr. Andrew Schwartz in radiology. But when varnished with Starburst colors, blown up larger-than-life, and hung in a gallery or projected in London's Leicester Square, the images have an immediate post-pop aesthetic appeal and recall Mr. Andy Warhol, who de Cadenet counts as an influence (along with French conceptual artist Yves Klein and American photographer Edward S. Curtis). Like Warhol's soup cans (or his own series of "Skull" paintings in the mid-70s), the mundane becomes metaphysical. "The portraits are working as an actual record of the subject and also on a metaphorical level," he says.

All of the subjects are taken to an X-ray facility where each signs an ethical protocol release form acknowledging the one-time, full-frontal exposure as solely for the purpose of art. He's radiated about 60 to date, in London, Nairobi, the South of France, New York and LA. One subject, former spy Kevin Fulton, still wanted by the I.R.A., warned de Cadenet that if discovered in public, he and whomever he was with would be gunned down. This added another dimension to the mortality theme.

De Cadenet's skulls reference (whether consciously or not) the vanitas genre of painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, a type of still life consisting of objects (skulls are common) that symbolize the brevity of human life — mortality — and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements — identity (certainly evident in "British Celebrities"). "I think the vanitas concept is really interesting as applied to portraiture, as it offers each subject the unique experience to contemplate their own mortality," he offers.

In fact, de Cadenet, who's been exhibiting professionally since age 18, will join three or four others this summer in a vanitas-themed show at Briggs Robinson Gallery in New York, which represents him. Gallery owner Nick Robinson was immediately impressed by the skulls' aesthetics: "their frontal format and bright color... the simple sign-like sensibility of pop." He finds them both contemporary and classic. "This slick, machined quality makes them seem very precise, technically advanced� but their formal beauty also echoes the very fastidious technical beauty" of vanitas paintings. (Past works were of cibachrome and current ones are all digital prints, generally mounted onto an aluminum sheet and gloss laminated.)

Perhaps at the exhibition he'll reveal a new series. He's currently working on "Movie Stars in LA" (starting with "The One" from The Matrix) and has a few commissions for "Neon Skull Portraits," which are based on the subject's X-ray and made in ultraviolet tube (one has a remote-controlled brightness dimmer).

Essentially, de Cadenet is searching for the "truth," whatever that may be, in whatever manifestation it may lie. Says Robinson, "Art seems to like to reference one of two things: the various elements of the human existence, or itself. Perhaps the best work does both." Veritas in vanitas? You judge.