Representation is a big word and it gets exponentially bigger when it itself is represented. Like multiplying by negatives, an absence of an absence constructs an index of an index. What would that look like?

Rod Barton presents the group show “representative representative” bringing together the works of Tom Król, Ryan Cullen, Isabel Alicia Baptista and Malte Zenses. The show, running from 15th June – 21st July 2017, will feature the cross cultural dialogue present in each artists visual practice through the contextual exchange and decrypted encryption of the pop-culture trace, physical structure and definition of the surface. The artists, having worked together since 2013, exchanging ideas via a rhythmic process of dialogue and a shared interest in the nature of representation to obscure and replace entities by others that can be seemingly unrelated. A process of building shortcuts to nothing.

For all four artists, the importance of imagery that slides across the foundations that make up dialogue is paramount. Drawing on folklore, limbs, language, initials amongst other disparate snatches of fragmented visual conversation, each artist place themselves in the space between narrator and historian; collector and creator, linguist and translator. Drawing lines of distinction between that which conceals and that which replaces, the pieces take on the role of a gallery based QR code, form without content while at the same time being only content without form.

The show highlights the use of both partitions and supports to separate and elevate content in order to sharpen contexts down to a finite point. These structures are about preventing the collapse of the pieces and holding the literal weight of the material against creating a collapse of the white cube.

 

 

 

Rod Barton
representative representative
Isabel Baptista, Ryan Cullen, Tom Krol, Malte Zenses
15th June – 21st July, 2017
41-43 Consort Road
London SE15 3SS