JOAN FONTCUBERTA - Sarcophyton trocheliophorum

Paper: Giclée prints on Hahnemühle Museum Fine Art paper
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Edition: 5
Year: 2024
Certificate: Signed and numbered by the artist.

JOAN FONTCUBERTA – Sarcophyton trocheliophorum

With Sarcophyton trocheliophorum, Fontcuberta reaches the threshold where biology becomes metaphysics. The work appears to be a hyper-detailed scientific photograph – a magnified view of coral, its soft tissue rendered in perfect greyscale. However, the longer you look, the more something else is revealed: a topography of thought, a living paradox between structure and sensation.

The invented name Sarcophyton trocheliophorum is almost indistinguishable from actual marine taxonomy. The genus Sarcophyton refers to leather corals, while the suffix trocheliophorum seems like a relic of Victorian science – the language of discovery reused as fiction. Fontcuberta borrows this syntax not to imitate nature, but to parody our desire to classify it.

In its monochrome austerity, the coral resembles both an X-ray of an organism and a landscape from another planet. Its folds and membranes pulsate with silent intelligence, like neurons petrified in mid-thought. The illusion of scientific precision conceals a philosophical provocation: what if the instruments of truth – the microscope, photography, the Latin name – were themselves instruments of the imagination?

Here, Fontcuberta's humour is subtle but astute. Sarcophyton trocheliophorum could easily hang in a natural history museum and be admired for its “authenticity”. Yet it is a pure invention – a ghost specimen conjured up by an artist who takes pleasure in showing that belief and vision often develop faster than biology.