Posted on
2015-10-26
Serving as a studio mantra for the artist, warning to the population, or instruction for the viewer, the exhibition title Must Chill is as enigmatic as the individual works in the show. In this latest body of work, Harris has expanded his scale and process to create elaborate pictorial worlds layered with meaning and spatial complexity, as well as expanses of kaleidoscopic fields made of intricately carved and drawn detail. Here the dichotomies between picture/frame and focus/periphery have subtly been integrated to form vast, overall designs. Within a single work may be a host of new technical and formal developments, such as atmospheric spray paint, mathematically produced fractal patterns, stereoscopic landscape painting, miniature representational forms carved across a painting’s surface, laser engraving and etching, and 3-dimensionally rendered CNC machine carving. These processes create a strangely illusionistic and idiosyncratic pictorial object that exists somewhere between 2-D painting and 3-D sculpture.
Continuing with his interest in durational viewing and meditative studio practices, Harris has recently engaged in stream of conscious, automatic drawing. Often regressive and fantastic, these finely rendered figurative scenes form writhing Bosch-like masses contained within rigorous formal compositions. Over life-sized works such as Linen Last Judgement (V) and Grand St. Boogie Woogie present immersive anti-images, where endless configurations of discursive imagery can be continually discovered over time. Miniscule writing along carved edges describe the drawn scenes, rewarding the attentive viewer with clues to decipher a narrative full of apocalyptic themes, social commentary, Freudian slips of the pen and ridiculous humor.
Opposite – Lens Crafters, 2014-15
Exhibition runs through to December 19th, 2015
Feuer/Mesler
319 Grand Street, 2nd Floor
New York
NY 10002
www.feuermesler.com
