CALL him hole-hearted.

Around 2001, during an economic depression in his country, Argentinian artist Luis Teran began perforating tin cans to fill them with light - an act of everyday intervention motivated by the fact that he was a poor student with few resources and materials.

Today, the 32-year-old works with power drills, sewing needles and twist drills, depending on the size of the holes he wants to make.

The process, he says, is very monotonous.

"I become an automaton when I perforate. I just don't think about anything; my mind free of pre-judgment," he told my paper in a recent interview.

A Traveler's Stories , his exhibition at Hermes' gallery space on the third floor of its Liat Towers boutique is made up of pages torn from fashion rags, music mags to Playboy magazine, all of them perforated with tiny holes to create elaborate patterns and images-within- images.

There's a mix of the sacred and the profane in Teran's perforations: Nude women rub shoulders with beauty-ad models sporting Virgin Mary-like halos.

Perhaps that's not surprising - the work is partly inspired by the stained-glass windows of churches.

Teran said: "My procedure turns everyday objects into sacred-looking ones. My work is very methodical and I enter into a meditative mood. There's almost a sort of enlightenment that happens during and after the procedure."

- CLARA CHOW

A Traveler's Stories is on at Hermes' gallery space on the third floor of Liat Towers (541 Orchard Road) until Sunday, from 10.30am to 7.30pm daily. Admission is free.

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