NEW BLOOD ART FROM ARTIST JORDAN EAGLES

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, artists like Andres Serrano and Ron Athey helped ignite the culture wars with artworks that combined blood and other bodily fluids with melodramatic images of religion and homosexuality. More recently, the New York artist Jordan Eagles has taken blood art in what you might call a more picturesque direction, using blood-soaked gauze, bloody resin, sundried blood and such ingredients in large-scale painting-like concoctions.

The latest installment of his work goes on view in a new solo exhibition, “HEMOGLYPHS,” at Williamsburg’s Causey Contemporary gallery, Sept. 9-Oct. 2, 2011. On view is a 32-foot-tall mural of animal blood and resin, a 16-foot-tall Plexiglas case enclosing sheets of blood-soaked gauze and a series of black acrylic boxes coated in a blood and copper mixture.

The blood is sourced from slaughterhouses and preserved in the plastic and resin to protect the natural color and to prevent decomposition. When lit, the blood glows, casts shadows, reveals textural details and “makes the works appear as if they are illuminated from within.”

If that’s hard to imagine, it might help to know that a 50-foot reproduction of one of Eagles’ works was once made into a stage curtain for an Alice Cooper concert. For an even better visual, here’s a video.

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