Collections

In PORTRAITS, the individual letter becomes a generative unit of form.

Letters are applied by hand, one by one, onto aluminium panels. They do not assemble into readable words or sentences. Through accumulation, density, overlap and relation, they construct a visual structure from which the human figure progressively emerges.

Seen from a distance, the alphabet recedes and a presence appears. Faces and bodies acquire volume, depth and identity. At close range, the image dissolves again into a multitude of individual signs, revealing the material and typographical structure from which it was generated.

The letter retains its alphabetic identity while suspending the necessity of being read. It becomes visual DNA: a finite element capable, through potentially infinite combinations, of generating different human presences.

This dual perception — between letter and figure, fragmentation and unity, language and image — places PORTRAITS at the heart of CHriZ's Genomist research.

The figure does not precede the letters. It emerges through them.

In MASKS, individual typographical characters become generative units from which ambiguous facial structures emerge.

Applied and layered by hand onto aluminium panels, the letters accumulate into three-dimensional formations that evoke faces, helmets, shields or impenetrable veils. They are not arranged to be read: their meaning lies in their density, position, overlap and relation.

The alphabet becomes structure.

As the characters gather, a presence begins to surface — never fully revealed, never entirely concealed. What appears to be a face may simultaneously become a barrier; what seems to protect an identity may also prevent it from being seen.

The physical stratification of the letters reinforces this ambiguity. Light moves across their slight relief, producing shadows and changing perceptions as the viewer shifts position. The image is therefore not fixed: it continually oscillates between surface and depth, recognition and uncertainty.

Within CHriZ's Genomist research, MASKS explores the moment in which alphabetic matter generates not simply a face, but the threshold between what we reveal and what we choose to hide.

The mask is not placed upon an identity. It is the structure through which identity emerges.

FACES of the Soul begins in the territory before words. CHriZ approaches the face not as the likeness of a specific person, but as a primary field of recognition: the place where presence, vulnerability and silence become visible before they can be named.

Across dark surfaces, thousands of hand-applied and layered letters rotate, overlap, gather and disperse. Changes in density construct light, shadow and volume, while the close crop and restrained palette remove narrative detail from the face. No sentence is formed. The alphabet retains its identity, but relinquishes reading to become the matter from which expression emerges.

From a distance, each work resolves into an immediate human presence, held above all by the gaze. Up close, that unity fragments into autonomous signs and intervals of black. The face remains suspended between formation and dissolution, as fragile and unstable as the inner states it carries.

Within CHriZ's Genomist research, FACES of the Soul investigates the face as a universal, pre-verbal language. These are not portraits of individuals, but surfaces of recognition in which the viewer may encounter something already known, yet not fully speakable.

Before a word is spoken, the face has already begun to speak.

In WORDS | Silences, the alphabet moves away from representation and enters the territory of abstraction.

Individual letters are applied and layered by hand onto aluminium panels, accumulating into blocks, bands, fractures and dense typographical structures. They retain their alphabetic identity, yet no longer ask to be read.

Language withdraws from meaning and becomes presence.

Through repetition, compression, interruption and void, alphabetic matter generates forms that oscillate between geometry and instability, order and fragmentation, weight and suspension.

Here, the image does not resolve into a body or a face.

What emerges instead is a visual and sculptural presence: a structure generated by the relationships between individual signs.

The empty areas surrounding these concentrations are not passive backgrounds. They become active spaces — pauses within the density of the alphabet, places where what is absent acquires the same importance as what remains visible.

Silence, therefore, is not the absence of language. It is what happens when language no longer needs to speak.

Within CHriZ's Genomist research, WORDS | Silences extends the generative principle of the letter beyond figuration. Alphabetic matter no longer generates human identity; it generates tension, space and form.

The word disappears. The letter remains. And silence acquires a form.

In WORDS | Anatomies, the human body becomes a territory in which language, matter and physical presence converge.

Individual letters accumulate and overlap, generating contours, muscular tensions, curves and gestures. They retain their alphabetic identity, yet their purpose is no longer primarily linguistic: through density and relation, they participate in the construction of the body itself.

From a distance, the alphabet recedes and anatomy emerges. At close range, the apparent unity of the body fragments into a multitude of signs.

The skin becomes a threshold between two perceptions: the recognizable presence of the figure and the alphabetic structure from which it takes form.

The bodies are not idealized. They emerge from darkness in intimate, vulnerable or suspended positions, as though their physical presence were still in the process of becoming.

Created before the formal definition of Genomism, WORDS | Anatomies already embodies many of the generative principles that would later become central to CHriZ's research: the suspension of reading, the autonomy of the individual letter and the emergence of form through accumulation and relation.

The body is not described by language. It emerges through it.

WORDS | Invisible Codes marks the origin of CHriZ's investigation into the relationship between language, image and identity.

Here, letters begin to move beyond their conventional function. They remain recognizable as alphabetic signs, yet reading is no longer their only destination.

Accumulated, layered and physically applied to the surface, they become traces of experience — fragments through which identity, memory and desire take form.

The image becomes a field of tension between what can be read and what can only be perceived.

Language is still present, but its linear order begins to dissolve. Letters escape the sentence and enter the image, establishing relationships based on density, proximity, stratification and visual rhythm.

This is the fundamental transition initiated by Invisible Codes.

The collection does not need to be defined retrospectively as Genomism. Its importance lies elsewhere: it establishes the territory from which Genomism would later emerge.

The word begins to fragment. The letter begins to acquire autonomy. The image begins to happen between them.

In The Words Within, language does not suspend its meaning. It embraces it.

Portraits of iconic figures are constructed through words, speeches, quotations and expressions connected to their lives and public identities. Language becomes both visual matter and biographical substance.

A phrase is therefore never neutral.

A quotation associated with Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Albert Einstein or another cultural figure carries a memory that contributes to the identity of the portrait itself.

Seen from a distance, these fragments converge into a recognizable presence. At close range, the portrait opens into another dimension: the viewer encounters the words, ideas and expressions through which that identity has entered collective memory.

Unlike the later Genomist research, where the individual letter suspends the necessity of being read, The Words Within deliberately preserves the semantic power of language.

Here, reading and seeing coexist.

The word constructs the image because what the word says matters.

The collection therefore represents a fundamental stage in CHriZ's artistic evolution: a moment in which language builds identity before the research progressively shifts from the word to the individual letter.

The portrait reveals a face. The words reveal what remains within it.

In Wandering Memories, memory is not treated as an archive of images, but as what remains after experience has passed.

Places, encounters, gestures and cultures survive within us in fragments. They overlap, fade, return and transform, creating an interior geography that no longer corresponds exactly to what was once seen.

Letters become traces of this process.

Applied and stratified onto aluminium, they accumulate like fragments of experience, allowing figures and cultural presences to exist between recollection and transformation.

In works such as Flamenco Dancer and Tuareg, the subject is not intended as a documentary representation of a place or culture. It becomes the residue of an encounter: movement, posture, colour, rhythm and memory reconstructed through the artist's visual language.

The alphabet functions as a carrier of what remains — fragments that gather, overlap and resist disappearance.

Wandering Memories explores the distance between experience and recollection: between what happened and what continues to live within us.

Memory does not reproduce reality. It reconstructs it.