SETAREH is pleased to present south-east London-based artist James Owens' solo exhibition It's All Good.
James Owens (b. 1995, Middlesbrough) is a painter based in South-East London. His paintings showcase nature in all of its untamed glory. Recalling the late figurative watercolour works of Edward Burra, Owens' work blossoms with flowers and plants that dance around the canvas, competing for space and light. His style of painting hangs in the balance, somewhere between hopeful exploration and rigorous repetition. By experimenting with a variety of brush strokes and mark making, Owens fills the canvas with swirling thin layers of paint, conjuring imagined landscapes in which the figures are entrenched in the act of searching and experiencing; the outcome of which is unknown. This unknown is referenced throughout paintings such as the metal detector in 'Let's Nighthawk Tonight' or the shadow of a UFO in 'Before the Crash, Roswell (1947)', inviting the viewer into a world of outsiders who are so infatuated by the mystery, so willing to believe and to give themselves over to something else. This desire manifests itself in more material objects, like the shirt in 'Study of a Garment Hanging in Soho 1' or the figure in 'Leave the Light On' who, unable to resist, places his hand calmly on the sharp spines of a sea urchin.
'It's All Good' consists of 16 paintings that highlight this desire in different ways, from unknown phenomena, timeless jackets in shop windows to a bell ringing out from around a horses neck, each is a symbol of Owens' search for material or personal enlightenment, objects that are paramount to the stories we invent to help us survive.
James Owens modernist paintings deter instant gratification, drawing you around and around like the swirls of his brushstrokes until you land on something identifiable. They catch you, like a butterfly and hold you for just long enough to see your intricacies, up close and intimate and then release you again, into a bustling whirlwind of scrawling plants and organic matter. The works look as though they could reproduce or grow and replicate themselves rather than require the hand of the artist, and yet they are intuitive paintings that seek to oppose the digital, photographic, reproductive or easily absorbed image.
By building up clusters of brushstrokes until some semblance of a 'reality' is created, Owens' style of brushwork resembles the subject of nature depicted in his paintings, where day and night are blurred and it's the temperature that first emanates from the canvas, burning hot or ice cool, from the original stains of primed colour. Rarely are parts of the painting painted over again and surely never started again, therefore they carry a refreshing honesty' "it is what is it" or "take it or leave it". This reminds me of the Romantic ideals of Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia', where the jam Thomasina stirs into pudding cannot be unstirred, reflective of the natural progress from order to disorder. The disorder in Owens paintings cannot be unpainted, nor the plants un-grown, therefore the paintings suggest an inevitable chaos, as if he's given in to nature as it grows over and covers up and time simply must move on.
Much like the Romanticist gardens in Stoppard's Arcadia, the Gothic untamed landsca- pes in Owens work are simultaneously changing and forming, and don't attempt to give provide answers or 'reason', but instead testify to the act of looking, not knowing for sure and represent the tumultuous emotion of experiencing life rather than the rational answers to it.
This representation of beauty owes itself to Romantic landscape painting. The history of Romantic landscapes sought to represent the power dynamic between humans and the landscape, capturing the subjective feelings of the artist, rather than an objective record of the observable world. Where the "Picturesque'' refers to the beauty of nature unspoiled by human intervention and the "Sublime" shows nature at its most fearful, James' paintings fit somewhere in between or somewhere on the outskirts of this; a dystopian landscape where some act of devastation has happened or possibly is coming, its inhabitants fully absorbed in the exploration of an environment that nature is reclaiming. Overgrowing, untamed and spreading uncontrollably, the plants, weeds and flowers overwhelm its figures who aren't the powerful owners over nature in Owens' imagined spaces, or at least share the space in a harmonious way.
Rather than reward the viewer who is able to place certain plants or objects, Owens conjures a strangeness, an eery balance between seeing and believing that comes from the shapes which you cannot identify by name, like blobs or pools of colour that lope and lean. These abstract forms create a structure which holds the canvas together, without which it might fall apart. Like the shallow pictorial space and bold lines and shapes in the works of Roger Hilton, or the un- meticulous gestural abstraction of Martha Jungwirth, who's prods, swipes, scribbles and scratches "feel like little explosions of pure expresssion" (Eddy Frankel), Owens' canvases, too, are modes of experimentation, like the dotted heart in 'Let's Nighthawk Tonight' that looks as braille feels, like a tattoo from a former, more innocent romance or a doodle on the edge of a water bill as you hold the phone line some more whilst waiting to speak to somebody real.
In his biggest painting 'Lunar Moths Gather', you want to feel your hand over the rough grain bark of an oak tree that floats rather than stands. Ones eyes are drawn to the luminescent green moths, after which the painting is named, that hover invitingly, so close you could hold almost grasp their oversized tails. The middle section of this canvas is especially loose and is a fine example of Owens' ability to paint in such an abstracted fashion that you can barely piece together what you are looking at, fading and forming. These abstract forms, Owens says, are like floaters he had hovering around his eyes as a child. It often feels as though your vision is being tested, and it takes time for your eyesight to adjust when first seeing one of these paintings, like driving in the dark towards someone who is too late to turn their lights off full beam. In this painting there is, however, some artificial presence from the backlit luminous green that reflects off forms like the sound of search lights or sirens circulating through the woods. These highlights are the giveaway that there may be something supernatural out there, at odds with the nature and plants. Like in ‚Pink Pink Pink Moon' the colour broods like the red of Paula Rego's 'Stray Dogs (The Dogs of Barcelona), 1965'. If you stare at this florescent red for a moment too long everything else in the room begins to look yellow.
Accompanying the paintings in the exhibition is a 24 minute mixtape of demo tracks written and recorded by the artist that will debut at the private view. This piece provides alternate readings of the paintings, made during the same period of time.
The mixtape touches upon John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing', wherein he suggests "music and rhythm change the significance of the picture." Berger's example of Italian opera music played over a Caravaggio painting makes it look serious and foreboding, whereas the religious choral music makes it appear profound and sombre. The paintings are no longer constant but "are changed by the music played over it". Owens' mixtape responds to different elements and symbols within the work; the programmed drum machine is like the ground of the paintings, contrasted with the improvised guitar and synth which are like the strokes of paint whirring in and out.
His hushed vocals are so pitched down that you can barely hear some of the lyrics, "it was snowing, I was struggling too" and "I feel this is the end, I tried to meet you" givethe impression that Owens, through intimate whispers, is attempting to come to grips with something. "He's got the whole world in His hands" one recording sings affirmingly, echoing throughout the tracks of the New York subway and reminds me of the communal singing of hymns from primary school, distant but timeless. Samples such as the horses neigh, or the choral singing from Copenhagen Cathedral that emanate throughout, make it feel as though you are seeing the painting underwater, or recalling fleeting moments from a dream, as if you have just woken up, eye lids barely open, looking at the paintings through heavy eyes.
These sounds come together to create a musical soundscape that haunts the exhibition and gives small snippets of Owens' personal feeling towards a world that can be cruel and chaotic but wholly meaningful; "and it's all good" James sings over and over, like a mustering up of courage, a quiet act of perseverance and ultimately of resilience.
By Peter Carrick References
1. Eddy Frankel, Thaddaeus Ropac https://ropac.net/news/846-martha-jungwirth-re- view/
2. John Berger, Ways of Seeing 1972, Episode 1, Youtube 17:00 minutes
Press release courtesy SETAREH - Düsseldorf and Berlin.
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