Madonna Alkahest

Madonna Alkahest draws on the visual language of medieval and early Renaissance devotional painting, reworking the figure as both image and object in a contemporary context. The work engages directly with traditions of sacred image-making, where paintings functioned as sites of contemplation and transformation. The title refers to the alchemical “alkahest,” a universal solvent believed to reduce all matter to its essential form. This idea is explored through the treatment of the figure, where solidity and dissolution coexist, and through the material surface of the painting itself. Elements associated with devotional imagery- blue and gold tones, stillness, and frontal presence, are retained but destabilised. By placing transformation at its core, the work connects historical modes of representation with a contemporary exploration of identity, matter, and change.