Piscis Volans
The Flying Fish
The fish does not fly. It pretends to — but in the pretending, escape becomes indistinguishable from flight.
Description
Piscis Volans returns the gaze. One of two whole creatures in The Crossing taxonomy with an open eye — built to look back at whoever is looking at it, rather than lie still to be measured. Elsewhere the archive reads the ocean by its fragments — a bone, a fluke, a dorsal. Piscis Volans refuses that reduction: it is whole, it has a face, and it meets the viewer directly, transforming the wall from a surface into a witness.
The fish isn’t leaping for the view. It’s fleeing — something under the surface has it marked, and the leap is pure survival. But the instant it’s airborne, wings spread, tail still driving, the act of escape becomes indistinguishable from flight. This is the paradox the piece holds: the threshold where survival crosses into transcendence.
Patinated by hand from raw copper tone into verdigris, the colour shifts toward the wingtips — the same blue-green skin copper forms wherever it meets salt air over time. The oxidation isn’t decoration; it’s the material undergoing, in copper, the crossing the fish is caught mid-performing.
Specification
- Medium
- Hand-sculpted water-based acrylic resin infused with copper powder
- Surface
- Hand-patinated verdigris; hand-painted flow lines
- Nomenclature
- Piscis Volans — Plancius / Bayer, 1598
- Scale
- 1125 × 1100 × 180 mm (≈ 44 × 43 × 7 in)
- Edition
- Unique work — the only one made
- Status
- Available for acquisition
Process — The Whole Creature
The full creature sculpted in clay — wings spread, tail driving, open eye committed to the master form.
Silicone negative taken; cast in resin infused with copper powder.
Hand-driving the verdigris oxidation — colour shifting toward the wingtips.
Hand-painting additional flow lines and vorticity — responding to the studio that day.
Protective seal applied; rigged for wall installation.
Piscis Volans is a unique work — the only one made. The flow lines are cast into the form; additional painted flow lines are applied by hand afterwards, responding to the conditions in the studio that day. No two surfaces alike.
Provenance
- Artist
- Ché Hough (Cape Town)
- Studio
- Cape Cache, Pearly Beach, Western Cape
- Field research
- 139,500 nautical miles at sea
- Execution
- 2025 — Pearly Beach Studio
- Authentication
- Certificate of Authenticity issued by Cape Cache
Related in This Typology
Manta
Piscis Volans and Manta are the two whole creatures in The Crossing taxonomy — the ones with open eyes, the ones that look back.
View the work →
Artic Tern
Hanging three-bird installation — the same open-eyed crossing, in development.
View the work →Piscis Volans is a unique work — the only one made — currently available for acquisition. New iterations within the taxonomy can be commissioned in dialogue with your space.
Acquisition Enquiries