Fears That I May Cease To Be
Fears That I May Cease To Be
Pio Abad, Alex Dordoy, Chris Kohler, John louden & Jason Rosenberg
26 SEPTEMBER – 25 OCTOBER 2009
Location: GENERATORprojects
Pio Abad’s work reflects on the possibility of the singular voice in a time when the excess of information has become a form of mental contamination. His drawings proceed from an obsession with pattern and its relationship to hegemonic structures, the underlying systems of belief and power that threaten the individual by determining the value of images and objects. The process of drawing is seen as a navigational strategy that charts the relationship of images with one another. Drawing being intrinsic to maneuvering battlefields and charting new territories. There is an unresolved conflict between subject and process in Abads’ work- images seem to point to a resignation to hegemony, the attention to craft and labour involved in production seem to assert the power of individual action.
Alex Dordoy is a painter, though this has often expanded to mean sculpture and installation. The work uses found material (whether object or image) as a framework within which to suspend a range of painterly gestures. Dordoys’ new work ‘Head to the Beach, Lets Head to the Beach, Lets’ formed from cheap metal shelves buckled with ratchet straps and supported with a block of marble, uses pop aesthetics to give pathos to the frustrated violence of the initial gesture. The two paintings, ‘Totems Patons,’ and ‘Giraffes of the Future,’ clash different forms of image and mark making content as a means to turn expressionism into an intellectual proposition. In these ways, the works create an understanding of their own possibility; as much as they would like to break out, they can only exist as a product of a restrictive structure.
Chris Kohler’s practice centres around the book, the book as object, artwork, an unraveling of ideas, both literary and artistic. Drawing inspiration from contemporary redefinition of illustrative practice, Kohlers current work, a book entitled POSTHUMA, takes a collection of stated influences supplied by the other artists in the show and attempts to resolve them again. Through using (for the most part) collaged imagery, the brief becomes apparent in its very process. The disparate sources of each element reflect the collection and distillation of thought, reformulating influence into idea.
John Louden’s new body of work centres on memory and the way images from our past intertwine and merge together to create a new memory, blurring with the passage of time. Louden begins with film and popular culture as source material. Layering scenes over each other to confuse truth, replaying the film over and over to construct a phantom image/memory. The original image becomes altered creating new multiple layers and meanings. The scenes are overlapped on a computer, photographed and reframed further removing the image from its source. The images are layered arbitrarily to remove narrative, establishing alternative interpretation.
Aesthetically inspired by contemporary design but fighting the functional aspect, Jason Rosenberg’s collages are recollections of another time, brought together in the present. Bound and layered together simply with tape, Rosenberg’s careful selection of materials creates a startling fragility, alluding to the works limited life span.