New works on paper (solo exhibition)

Abstract

The six works featured in this exhibition were selected from over 20 works, completed late in 2008 and throughout 2009. This exhibition represents the outcome of the first stage of body of creative work through which I intend to investigate the dialectic gap between brute materiality and constructed meaning. That is, (1) how artists manipulate the ‘dumb’ materials of their medium (paint, wood, stone etc.) to produce meaningful forms; and (2) how the resulting meaning goes beyond (transcends) the materials to become the aesthetic basis of a shared culture. This exhibition was the first of a series of exhibitions through which these themes will be explored. This project, in both its expressive methodologies and theoretical underpinnings draws on the exploration of the dialectic of material and meaning initially explored in 1960’s & 70’s in the work of second generation New York School abstract expressionists and neo-dadaist painters such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Similar themes of relevance to this project are beginning to be explored through a poststructuralist semiotic frame of reference by contemporary artists such as Josh Smith, Isa Genzken, & Jutta Koether.