Standard Output not only explores some of the aesthetic shifts in painting that resemble a pseudo-modernist approach to process and form, but also examines a visually repetitious by-product of social media, which at once could be read as a trending phenomenon or the beginning of a new ‘ism’, something missing in contemporary art for the last decade.
The word fashionable is somewhat unavoidable in our social media age. By making things and posting the results, we are advertising ourselves to mass distribution and open to a kind of personal branding. An original artefact remains but it may be consumed by its digital simulacra – the copy becoming more ‘followed’ than the real work. However, as our connections with digital media and screen technology become more fluid, so too does the flow of digital information back into our analogue environment. Is it a surprise then that more and more of these common digital tropes are being repeated in an almost obsessive manner and are filtering into the language of painting?
Blockprojects
Until 14 September, 2013
SO/PSD_374, acrylic on board, steel frame, 150 x 112cm
