Untitled Works / Solitary Pine

OCTOBER 26^th – November 16^th

From the moment it is discarded, the rag is imbued with both memory and forgetting. Abandoned, without use and torn from context, it still shimmers with potency, revealing and obscuring in almost equal measure, an almost wholly metaphoric material.

That we see, learn and ‘know’ exclusively through metaphor or analogy is the recognition of a curse and the emblem of self-knowledge. Analogy is itself an analogy, that of living, of change, transmission and transferral. We are made by and of analogy, through chemistry, neurology, genetics and language. Our emotions are expressions of our hormones. Our DNA makes copies of itself to perpetuate us. Our desires give shape to our fears. Metaphor is the lake of mercury that floats all religions and philosophies.  It is both the means by which we penetrate all mysteries and the limit of our knowledge.

The sculptures represented in these photographs begin in abandonment and debasement, adrift on an arc toward oblivion. The symmetry imposed upon these fragments reorganises and transforms them for a moment, evoking the simplest narrative pulse. That is all. I have tried to make models of the foundational miracle, the disposition to select meaning from the arbitrary, the original act of analogy.

“These characters are in my head and I want them outta there” – George Condo

My characters come together through a series of taking bits and scraps of material retrieved from the bin of “unsuccessfuls” and placing them here and there, this way and that, and getting a feel for the meaning implied. I start seeing a relationship between shapes and eventually they come together and ideas appear.

I don’t work from preconceived ideas. I work fast and intuitively to stay as far away from logic as possible. If rational thought interferes, the process becomes stalled. As I “map around” the composition I allow forms to grow out of themselves and expand and evolve. It's a process of redefining what I have started with as I construct the image based on what the preceding scrap piece tells me.

Part-human and part animal images morph with gaping toothy, sharp jaws, bulgy eyes and metallic bits and parts on layers of colour and texture. The images hover and appear to float in a mass of white. I want to depict personalities on top of these characters. It's about being reconstructive with deconstructed (torn apart) past works creating new inter-relationships of shape, texture, colour and line together in a single character.

It is this openness and freedom of discovery as I manipulate what I have that keeps the image fresh, real and unexpected. This is the aesthetic I strive for.

https://www.instagram.com/rothenburger_she/

https://mbradica.com/shelley/