Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw (born Nottingham, United Kingdom, 1966) is one of the key figures of the so-called Young British Artists who emerged in London in the late 1980s. Transformer arose through a specific commission from Hortensia Herrero to create a work inspired by the Fallas in Valencia, one of her great passions. As the artist himself explains: ‘I thought maybe I could do an installation on the Fallas festival, incorporating some of these ideas of renewal and burning and then coming back to life again, and of this cycle, the cycle of nature. So I begin with the ninots, those big sculptural forms that burn and collapse, and then go into those fireworks, those cosmic explosions that happen in the festival. And then we enter a quiet period where we have butterflies. Butterflies are a symbol of rebirth. They go from caterpillar to chrysalis and from chrysalis to butterfly, and the butterflies burn, and the symbol of rebirth appears, which is burning, but not being consumed by the fire, flourishing in the fire, and they’re floating around the room. And then we go into a sequence of smoke and flowers burning, and then the whole video loops and the cycle begins again.’