ANDREW GBUR
2016-01-18Gbur pares down familiar images to two or three opaque shades, applied contiguously in cartographic blocks. While the resultant pieces are recognizably depictive, the acts of isolation, visual reduction and repetition void their subject matter of its wonted semantic content. While past exhibitions have been limited to a single repeated subject, the artist’s driving concern with seriality manifests here as a network of motifs and themes, endowing the exhibition with a discernable rhythmicity. The works are mired in post-war Art History, repurposing the aesthetics of Pop Art and Minimalism to interrogate the value – or lack thereof – of contemporary symbols and signage.
Gbur’s practice is complexly, omnivorously appropriative: he derives his raw material from a variety of sources, recycling specific, identifiable iconography (the 20th Century Fox logo, a Suicide album cover), as well drawing from a more general pictorial lexicon (a sword, a pair of pants, a pumpkin). The paintings are cannibalistic, stripping pictures of nutritional value and re-presenting them as skeletons of themselves. A smiley face, the contemporary emblem of banal pleasantry, in Gbur’s hands reads as both vacant and malevolent; rather than serving its standard purpose of evincing happiness, the smiling hieroglyph instead reconnoiters the potential for deception and psychological violence intrinsic to pictographic communication. By inverting and nullifying his subject matter’s semiotic associations, Gbur bolsters his surfaces. The paintings’ initial impression of Minimalistic austerity deteriorates upon close investigation: subtle indications of their making – material inconsistencies, paper left behind by stencils, minute drips – quietly riddle the works.
Opposite – 30th Century, 2015
Exhibition runs through to February 28th, 2016
team (gallery, inc.)
83 Grand Street
10013 New York
USA
