YO, WHAT’S THE SWING-SCENE LIKE HERE?
KRISTIAN EVJU | EMILY SPARKES
13 SEPTEMBER — 6 OCTOBER, 2019
How do you go about translating the flow of experience into one fixed image, it’s almost impossible to answer but easy to recognize it when we see it. The search for and impact of it, once it has been captured, is arguably what keeps painting not only viable but a necessity for artists and viewers alike. But if we, the viewers, consider what painting is, what it entails, if we remove individual intention and examine what we are left with, what we see is a ritualistic pursuit, driven by an urge, akin to sex. Painting, it could be argued, is not so much about the finished product but about the process itself. In this capacity, the parameters are fairly narrow. But it is in the nuances that emanate from this process that we recognize and celebrate artistic voices as individual talent, and in turn, reinterpret them ourselves. In ‘Yo, what’s the swing-scene like here?’ the visual languages developed by Kristian Evju and Emily Sparkes show this pursuit at its most hedonistic.
Both artists have a common area of investigation; the impact of how we consume digital imagery and its entrenchment in our daily lives. For Evju, utilizing found imagery from a variety of sources that is seemingly unrelated, as frozen moments, eventually becomes in his paintings, representative as condescend narratives, similar to a film trailer. In doing this, we see a synergetic mirroring of how we construct our narration of reality, and sense of self through in online worlds. For Sparkes, frame of reference is found in the prevailing phenomena of (re)making and sharing images in online and virtual spaces in the form of memes, gifs and emoji, which may appear at once commonplace and puerile. However, far from banal, image-sharing culture and our current dependence on screens, she argues, is creating a new power of the image, which emphasises absurd humour, hysteria and play. By seeing them together, their individual intentions and nuances are both amplified and magnified to great effect. From the sharp, precision of Evju’s meticulous brushwork, employed in carefully considered and exceptionally balanced compositions, to the frenetic onslaught of imagery rendered in Sparkes’s confident, shoot-from-the-hip brushwork, the pursuit of it can be seen at its most athletic.
