“One generation’s virtue is another generation’s vice.”
The title Inherent Vice is a term I adopted from the profession of art conservation. It refers to a process that occurs when artists apply various media or techniques to the to their art work which will eventually result in its deterioration: it is the artist who, "intentionally or otherwise, through his choice of materials or his technique determines the transitory nature of his own work."
This title fit well in the context of my own practice, as is evident in the combination of chisels and paint gouged into the surfaces of my work and became a catalyst for the imagery of InHerent Vice. The paintings are a commentary about creating analogies utilising common and therefore unnoticed symbols in our environments. I have selected these common shapes and structures because of their immediate, constant, and invisible influences upon us.
The use of analogy has a long and elaborate history, especially during the renaissance and baroque periods when painters sought out and developed a silent language that, through the use of familiar objects which through time developed layered meanings and referenced ancient subtexts, that would, when arranged contextually and presented in a painting, immediately strike a cord of understanding with the viewer.
Similarly, I have incorporated modern day common icons, such as the telephone pole, together with specific composition and suitable titles to produce an analogy. These new symbols pose questions in regards to society’s vices and virtues, and the answers speak silently about our relation to utilitarian objects in the 21st century. What it reveals of our modern culture and where we place “value” on what we build, where we build it and why, is interesting in its discourse and the potential for new analogies in the modern age.
