Pont Ponko Pont (2023) is comprised of only two images. The underlying image is a spread from a Madame Tussaud’s wax museum catalogue depicting the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. One of the most conspicuous features of this image is Diana’s wedding dress and its exceedingly long train, which resembles nothing so much as a puddle. Atop the royal couple lies a photograph of the tragic Terra Nova arctic expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. This portentous image features an iceberg looming in the foreground, its profile suggesting a toothy maw dwarfing the ship and capable of crushing its filigree masts.
Jacques Derrida describes the way two such texts, when grafted together, “deform each other, contaminate each other’s content, tend at times to reject each other, or pass elliptically one into the other.” Through the coupling of images in Pont Ponko Pont, an amorphous figure is generated. Occupying the center of the picture, it resembles nothing in particular; it cannot be made out or named; it doesn’t belong. It deforms the picture in a manner akin to the anamorphic figure in Holbein’s “The Ambassadors.” This opulent portrait of two explorers is troubled by a mysterious object floating in the foreground that was once interpreted as a cuttlefish. Seen from the side, the image of a human skull is unmistakable. Yet this recognition comes at a cost: the remainder of the portrait is now distorted, unrecognizable. One cannot make out both images at the same time, and in this way Holbein refuses to allow one’s view to be organized.