This and That 2019. Artist’s book, paper collages, unique state print, 30 x 21 x 4 cm.
What do you get when you cross a Vermeer with a Cindy Sherman or a Joseph Beuys with a Jeff Koons? It sounds like a mix and match joke, that is because there is something irreverent about using collage as a medium in the first place.
Like the mix and match jokes, This and That, a collection of 71 collages pieced together using printed images sourced from the German Art magazine, are a mix of incongruent artworks cut and pasted together to form a hybrid – an offspring that resembles neither work by those artists but something entirely new.
While the chosen images come from disparate and incompatible contexts they are still recognisable, their relationship now forms unfamiliar scenarios that require re-appraisal and re-interpretation.
Re-interpreting former cultural artefacts provide insight into the way we construct scenarios and establish narratives. It discloses the process of establishing meaning and making sense. The convergence of the two elements is essential for meaningful narratives to become apparent.
This and That trigger allusions and interpretations, becoming screens for psychological projections. It is an invitation to interpret what is seen through the contradictions that are encountered.
Artworks are about relationships – relationships between contextual elements. There are connections between subjects or between subjects and objects or between objects, and between subjects, objects and their environment.
That is how significance is established. For something to become meaningful two elements are required – this and that.
And it is the relationship between those two elements that constitutes what a work is about.
The incompatibility of many contexts gives rise to surprise and humour.