David Burrows
dal 31/3/2008 al 9/5/2008
Segnalato da
31/3/2008
David Burrows
FA Projects, London
All over the new smart. The artist will exhibit a series of large scale collage works that employ magazine covers, as their source. These images are viewed by Burrows as powerful and affective magical technologies that demand and force attention so as to engage and construct specific subjectivities.
For this, Burrows’ third exhibition at f a projects, the artist will exhibit a series of large scale collage works that employ magazine covers, particularly from VOGUE, as their source. Each image starts with Burrows drawing and doodling over the magazine covers. These are then transcribed into larger, more complex images, meticulously constructed through the layering of coloured and metallic paper, card and foam. The originals are then destroyed.
Burrows views the magazine images as messages from strangers, designed to channel our attention in specific ways, through the signifying and asignifying (or affective) aspects of the material they produce. These images are viewed by Burrows as powerful and affective magical technologies that demand and force attention so as to engage and construct specific subjectivities. Through the collages, Burrows explores, amongst others things, the following three approaches as a means of responding to these messages, with the aim of harnessing or countering the magical power of these mass media communiqués:
Doodles - a playful technology that harnesses the durations that escape attention paid to everyday matters. Doodles are made in a distracted, absent-minded state without the aim of communication. Burrows’ doodles create ‘all-over’ and ‘from any-direction-whatever’ compositions.
Diagrams - an aesthetic technology that marks out or indexes movements, forces, thoughts, actions and desires. In this sense, Burrows views diagrams as a layer that traverses representation. Sigils - a powerful, magical technology that alters reality. Sigils are abstract or graphic images and symbols, often made with extreme care and craft, which are developed from spelling out and then abstracting wishes and incantations. Through this process, the original wish or incantation is forgotten except at an unconscious level. The wish is burnt into the mind by an individual concentrating intently on the sigil which is often destroyed at the end of the process. Burrows views the logos and images of consumer culture as perhaps the most powerful sigils ever created. Burrows sees his work as seeking to produce new or counter sigils: 'detourned' sigils as a protection against the incantations of others.
Performance: Plastique Fantastique v Bughouse: Channelling Performance @ f a projects
Saturday 10th May 2 - 6 pm
Plastique Fantastique are a fictional group created by David Burrows & Simon O’Sullivan, who employ ritualised performance to manifest human and inhuman avatars who deliver communiqués from the past and the future. For the performance at f a projects, they will collaborate with Bughouse, a group who employ analogue and digital technology (cameras, mixers & projectors) to mix live and pre-recorded film material to explore a ‘paranoid-critical’ method of manifesting chance (unconscious) connections and supernatural communications.
Both groups are interested in exploring the relation of aesthetics, politics and the sacred through events and performances. Bughouse stage gatherings in which the glitches of technology and states of technological delirium form the basis for a practice of channelling. For this performance, John Cussans and Peter Rockmount of Bughouse will make a selection of pre-recorded material, informed by their interest in Phillip K Dick and sci-fi cinema. Bughouse and Plastique Fantastique will then work together and draw upon the technologies and rituals of different (so-called) cults to access multiple durations and temporalities. The event will also feature performances by Plastique Fantastique, Bughouse and others including Oreet Ashery and Cünst.
David Burrows’ has exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally. Solo exhibitions include ‘New Life’, at The Chisenhale Gallery, London, travelling to The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, the Mead Gallery, Aspex Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Rose C’est La Vie’, Tel Aviv Museum of Art; ‘Micro/Macro: British Art 1996-2002’, Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest and Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento Italy. Burrows was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2002. Recent and forthcoming Plastique Fantastique performances include ‘Chymical Wedding’ at Tate Britain and a performance for 'Event Horizon' at The Royal Academy of Art.
Private view Tuesday 1st April 6.30 – 8.30 pm
FA Projects
1-2 Bear Gardens - London