6zai: Fusion Photography by Alexander James

Exciting and unusual floral arrangements are juxtaposed against violent chemical reactions, common flora is transposed into an unusual and ambiguous setting creating highly complex imagery. The powerful reactions within these globes seem at odds with the subject. Spheres of light, microcosms of raw power, glow from the interior of these floral spheres, referencing the true power of nature and the source of life of earth – the sun.

FUSION; the process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity : a fusion of an idea

Images comparable to visions of space: explosive reactions within a star, the formation of a distant stellar object referencing the Big Bang. Indeed, much like the Big Bang, these images represent a fleeting moment in time, a snapshot view of the birth of a fire already long extinguished. The beauty, color and purity of these most volatile reactions having already faded to darkness, destroying the globes that housed them in the process. A metaphor for our own existence: compared to vast expanse of space and time, we, like these reactions, flash into being and fade quickly back into the darkness. Fusion then, acts as a reminder not only of the beauty of life, of nature, but also its transience; one moment we are glorious luminescent beings, the next we are dust.

The images in Fusion distill the beauty of creation, and yet they are also images of destruction; these balls of pure light and energy engulfing and obliterating their protective yet fragile floral entity. These works present a delicate aesthetic filled with a visual representation to the power and veracity of destruction; these unique and unrepeatable events demonstrating not only great power and strength, but great vulnerability and uncertainty. Fusion can be seen as referencing contemporary environmental concerns; a visual representation of the destruction and havoc we as a species are inflicting on our planet, on nature. This is the true beauty of Fusion: these images depict not only the power, the beauty, and the frailty of the natural world, but act as a reminder that even organisms we observe everyday and dismiss without thinking are the result of the most amazing, monumental and profound series of events.