Gestures
Ethan Dodd
ARCADE August 2nd – August 10th 2019
Two pivotal moments in my recent life; The extraction of an entire year of emotional turmoil and chaos through the act of mark making on a mirror from my childhood home, And the destructive culmination of that same year shattering my ‘created self’ (much like a pane of glass as a blunt object is hurled through it’s fragile structure). Two distinct instances that would seed the rhizomatic concepts within this body of work.
To rebuild myself, I began to look inwards; rebuilding fragile connections within my brain between memories, imagery, passages of literature, and identity; expressed and appropriated through ‘the looking glass’ of ‘gestures’; both regaining my strength in the physical ‘gesture’ as a method of movement to express an idea, as well as the spiritual ‘gesture’ utilised to develop my inner sanctity as a meditative tool of ‘healing my fractured inner-self’.
Through art, one builds an identity. The self is an ethereal construct, shaped through the culmination of emotional moments; memories and ideas - lies and mis-communication, traumas and love, blurred into a vaguely human shape.
This show features new, unseen 2-D work; Mirrors, Collages, Watercolours, Sketchbooks, Literature & video detailing my ongoing deconstruction of identity within my practice.
Two pivotal moments in my recent life; The extraction of an entire year of emotional turmoil and chaos through the act of mark making on a mirror from my childhood home, And the destructive culmination of that same year shattering my ‘created self’ (much like a pane of glass as a blunt object is hurled through it’s fragile structure). Two distinct instances that would seed the rhizomatic concepts within this body of work.
To rebuild myself, I began to look inwards; rebuilding fragile connections within my brain between memories, imagery, passages of literature, and identity; expressed and appropriated through ‘the looking glass’ of ‘gestures’; both regaining my strength in the physical ‘gesture’ as a method of movement to express an idea, as well as the spiritual ‘gesture’ utilised to develop my inner sanctity as a meditative tool of ‘healing my fractured inner-self’.
Through art, one builds an identity. The self is an ethereal construct, shaped through the culmination of emotional moments; memories and ideas - lies and mis-communication, traumas and love, blurred into a vaguely human shape.
This show features new, unseen 2-D work; Mirrors, Collages, Watercolours, Sketchbooks, Literature & video detailing my ongoing deconstruction of identity within my practice.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Reflection as tangible, manifested material is integral to my current practice. Methods of rumination and understanding through self-mediation are key to understanding the many rhizomatic threads running parallel in my practice. Re-determination of Masculinity & Welsh Identity, Mental Health & Catharsis from Trauma, Escapism & Mythology are 'kin' within my artistic practice. Moments of peace are like diamond dust, attempting to craft that moment of stillness as a method of beneficial and spiritual dis-association for myself and the viewer is a constant experimental process, and at the heart of my work.
Reflection as tangible, manifested material is integral to my current practice. Methods of rumination and understanding through self-mediation are key to understanding the many rhizomatic threads running parallel in my practice. Re-determination of Masculinity & Welsh Identity, Mental Health & Catharsis from Trauma, Escapism & Mythology are 'kin' within my artistic practice. Moments of peace are like diamond dust, attempting to craft that moment of stillness as a method of beneficial and spiritual dis-association for myself and the viewer is a constant experimental process, and at the heart of my work.