Art | Daniel Ramos Obregón’s Surrealist Accessories make Astral Projection Sexy

Daniel Ramos Obregón is a Columbian designer creating intriguing work that you might find in a book of surrealist medical illustrations. He is a recent graduate of MA Fashion Artefact at London College of Fashion, 2014, where he elegantly combined performance, sculpture, fashion, and concept into his perfectly crafted Outrospection series.

Above Image: Daniel Ramos Obregón, Artefact #7 Tongue, Outrospection, 2014. Photography: Jorge Perez Ortiz. Model & Dancer: Lukasz Przytarski

Outrospection was inspired by philosopher Roman Krznaric who proposed that in order to know oneself one must live towards the outside. Seeing life from this objective viewpoint allows one to discover and shape oneself. More specifically, Outrospection is based on the out-of-body experience phenomenon, also known as astral projection. Ramos Obregón visualizes this using sculptural body accessories made from porcelain casts, gold plated brass metal frames, hand turned Colombian kingwood handles, and vegetable-tanned leather harnesses. A luxurious metaphysical experience!

Body parts like digits, hands, a tongue, and a face are cast in porcelain and attached to metal frames. They are indented to be worn like jewelry (at least in the performance) and hover near each matching body part. Artefact #7 Tongue is perhaps the most disturbing, having to hold the metal frame inside of your mouth, inducing claustrophobic dentist-chair flashbacks. The final worn work is successfully psychological in nature, appearing as if limb ghosts have leapt out of the body.

Through his presentation Ramos Obregón takes astral projections, a questionable idea popularly thought of as hippy-dippy rubbish, and makes them desirable, something for “the beautiful people.” The photos are overdramatized, sensual, sexual, and exclusive and resemble Georgio Armani’s men’s underwear ads or Matthew McConaughey’s ridiculous new Lincoln commercials. The series portrays out-of-body experiences as something controlled, definite, and pleasurable, quite the opposite of common preconceptions. Outrospection is a surrealist advertisement for meditative metaphysical experience.

Justin Crowe is CFile’s Writer-at-Large.

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