I thought my aim was to take topographical features from two or more countries and combine them to create a new place, I now realise these works are a reaction to my unease and anxiety with the world, finding myself unexpectedly but inevitably aligned with Metaphysical Art (the translation of the Italian Pittura Metafisica) which I introduced in a previous post.
This was an early twentieth century Italian art movement typified by dream-like views of eerie arcaded squares with unexpected juxtapositions of objects thus circumventing and subverting notions of what is normal, challenging frontiers and identity politics.
My concerns about isolationism, nationalism are just as strong, more so if anything but Im also concerned with wealth inequality, the plight of minorities across the globe whose predicament only seems to become worse while consumerisim appears as a new religion, pushing all aside even though the consumers themselves appear also to be its victims as more are swept into insecure and low paid employment for employers who are ironically owned by some of the richest individuals on the planet.
Metaphysical painting was born from the artist’s intent to create a world that does not exist in reality. A world capable of enhancing the intrinsic beauty of objects and matter. A fundamental aspect is its ambiguous and paradoxical character . The artist reproduces objects and elements of the real world, combining them and combining them in an absurd way. In this way the objects are stripped of their usual meanings, the work loses its link with reality and is placed outside it. It sums up my state of mind and method completely and makes sense of the range of material I have attempted to include in the project but also signals which images to continue with and which to leave behind.
