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26/5/2005

Henry Krokatsis

David Risley Gallery, London

Pray For My Beautiful Lost Cause

Krokatsis presents a collection of work initiated from found objects and images. Among these things saved from obscurity is a pair of 12-point stag antlers, found in a local junk shop. Krokatsis has cast them in solid aluminium and mounted them onto a section of rubber-coated georgian panelling.

Stag antlers, once a trophy laden with symbolic significance of privilege and dominance of nature's potency, now hold only a shallow echo of this.

Krokatsis has revived this devalued object, using its fluctuating status to create a sculpture which, despite its physical solidity, has a displaced nervous beauty that cannot be easily familiarised.

Showing alongside this work are large drawings on paper made with the residual smoke from burning rags, and two small paintings made in a similar fashion on wax; the heat from the flames softens the wax to suck in the smoke before solidifying.

This unpredictable technique is used to conjure up a group of seemingly disparate images - Russian royals at leisure, a sedan chair carried by serving boys (both images suggesting privileged lives no longer kept in play) and two images of prone figures receiving medical treatment, that nevertheless, all evoke a similar sense of vulnerability.

For all the interplay of symbolic significance and contingency, for all the layers of meaning that are hinted at, his work is clearly not a conduit for an overlaid narrative; as Krokatsis says Œthis is not art to make sense of the world ­ it is an act of faith, it¹s art as a spell¹

. Krokatsis recently showed at the South London Gallery and Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, in the CAS Showcase. He exhibits in Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Private View. Friday 27 May. 6.30-9.00

David Risley Gallery
45 Vyner Street - London
Thursday ­ Sunday. 12.00 ­ 6.00 or by appointment

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