FLOW imagines the body as a system of open channels that its owner can lose control over in certain singular but commonplace situations, related to sexuality, illness, childbirth and age. Images from intimate domestic scenes are interspersed with hospital interiors and marine animals, alongside a series of tinted fountain heads. These are based on faces found in the gardens of Museu do Açude, in the Tijuca forest in Rio de Janeiro, undated and made by unknown artists. Spending time in the park, Dolven Balke saw an image of this life-flow in the fountain figures, with their gaping mouths relentlessly spilling water. In collaboration with the museum she was able to take moulds of them on site. The flow is of time through matter, preserved in a variety of materials with different life-spans. Traces of water through stone and copper are captured in resin, while the slow disintegration of a whale’s body is made physical by an augmented TV flat screen, disassembled to expose the fragile technology beneath. A series of silicone objects, with industrial patterns cast from anti-slip matts, allude to the surface of skin. Encasing original polaroid photographs, they are shown alongside enlarged prints that make visible the dust, hairs and organic matter from the scan, sharp against the larger soft motif. The subjects seem to exist in a liquid atmosphere, floating between layers of chemicals and light, stuck in the thickness of an instant.

‍