art

Paul Merrick

Posted 7:12 pm by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

Paul Merrick, Untitled, Moon-Rock, Polystyrene, Found Image, Dressmaker Pins, Berry Pins, 115cm x 111cm x 10cm, Photo credit: David Lawson

I combine painting with sculpture, and the made with the ready-made. Investigating colour, form and architectural and special arrangements in relationship to painting as a subject and discipline in and of itself. My new work is the result of a sustained interrogation of painting and process in relation to the found object.

A series of new ‘Found Paintings’ are examples of this new investigation. Carefully selected objects such as used and discarded scrap metal, table tops, dusty panels and lighting units are presented as paintings, challenging the viewer to look beyond speculation about former use and action, towards acceptance of each object and surface as aesthetically final and complete, a reclamation and assertion of Painting through the artistic legacy of the found object.

My work draws on influences from disparate sources, referencing the luxury of 50’s and 60’s interior design of West Coast America, the murder scenes of Helmut Newton, Colour Film Noir and the post-industrial landscape of North East England. Salvaged from local scrap yards these works lead a double life: both as autonomous objects and as Mise-en-scene. As such they imply an event or act that occurs outside the work ambiguous and substantiation except for the intimated luxury or seediness of material and colour the works become both sinister and erotic. – Paul Merrick, 2012

See more artworks by Paul Merrick here.

Victor Man

Posted 11:05 am by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

In an essay presented to the 16th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1949 the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan located the formation of the self in the mirror reflection. Identity, as Lacan understood it, arose in the recognition of the image as oneself. For the most part the representation in art of the human form has followed the same model: by playing the role of the mirror, the art work re-enacts the moment of recognition in an exchange that ultimately reassures the viewer – Natalie Haddad

See more artworks by Victor Man here.

Jacob Kassay

Posted 10:58 am by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

Kassay’s monochromes experiment with history. “I think that the work I’m doing could’ve been made sixty years ago. Everything I’m working with now was available then,” – Aimee Walleston

See more artworks by Jacob Kassay here.

David Claerbout

Posted 10:28 am by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

David Claerbout, Mist Over a Landscape III

In a not-so-secluded, but unforgiving room on the fourth floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, three of David Claerbout’s videos formed a claustrophobic horseshoe of exuberance and brutality – Eugenia Bell

See more artworks by David Claerbout here.

Anna Gaskell

Posted 10:09 am by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

Consider the suggestive confusion between wonder and wander – as if getting lost and digression were at the root of amazement, of change, even of knowledge – Casey Kaplan

See more artworks by Anna Gaskell here.

Matt Botwood

Posted 12:27 pm by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

Travels in a Strange Land : Dark Spaces #73

I have visited a strange and beautiful place, a land containing creatures and locations that are fantastical but somehow familiar. A negative world. A landscape unknown. So close, but as yet undiscovered.

While some people may think that most of their local landscapes have been discovered and photographed ad-nauseum, I have sought out the landscapes of my imagination. However, these are not photoshop creations but real places. Illuminating the dark spaces beneath rocks and trees by viewing them in negative I have unearthed a landscape previously unknown to me. What you see in them is only limited by your imagination. This journey is ongoing.

Matt Botwood

See more artworks by Matt Botwood here.

Edward Chell

Posted 9:37 am by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Artists, Blogt.

Medway Services M2 Eastbound, oil on shellac on acrylic gesso on linen, 180 x 140cm, 2013, © the artist, photo Peter Abrahams / Lucid Plane

Edward Chell’s work explores a matrix of connected ideas centred on taxonomies and extinction, thresholds and boundaries, borders and hinterlands. For instance, his recent project Soft Estate investigated the aesthetics and ecology of motorway landscapes in relation to the 18th Century Picturesque. Chell uses such sites to foreground colliding narratives through painting and a wide range of media.

End to Defacing

Posted 12:44 pm by Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo & filed under Art Texts, Statement.

Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo, Vega, 65 x 50 cm, Técnica Mixta sobre tela, 2013

As Defacing art project comes to an end, I wanted to clarify its bases.

Defacing art project was imagined with a simple idea, naturally, to change the perception of the past and to create a new future, which will in turn become our present. As impossible as it may seem, it was poetic and plausible to me.

‘Living in the past’ is a condition of many immigrants, and I wanted to change this aspect of their lives. It is this way with my family, my people and all those who are in this situation of emotional limbo. Defacing Art project allows for the public to contribute to the artwork by painting on it, a real visual therapy. Rebuilding or maculating an iconographic image of our past can potentially change it or the perception of it, and then build a different future from this new landmark. Defacing is a project that invites to experiment with icons in the present while being aware that this is relative to the past.