Mixing art and fine dining, Sickboy (interviewed) is kicking off his latest show at the high-end department store Harvey Nichols tonight with a launch dinner and artist's talk. Optical Delusions is presented by Fluorescent Smogg and builds upon his...
Mixing art and fine dining, Sickboy (interviewed) is kicking off his latest show at the high-end department store Harvey Nichols tonight with a launch dinner and artist's talk. Optical Delusions is presented by Fluorescent Smogg and builds upon his ever-expanding use of semiotics to create a dream-like world that glows and radiates light.
The Bristol-based artist has long experimented with an array of unorthodox mediums: from painting on bell-jars in the early 2000s, to creating tapestries a decade later and onwards to the lightboxes which dominate this most recent exhibition. These illuminated works appear like a modernist evocation of the stained glass windows that adorn many churches, and as such, they are very much in keeping with the oblique but ever-present biblical references to redemption, salvation and the sweet-ever-after which can be found throughout his oeuvre; in many ways, these are the perfect visual accompaniment to the gospel and soul music which the artist so loves.
A number of light boxes are highly graphic, but others introduce far more painterly techniques to this medium. The layout of some of these works mirrors that of a comic book, but rather than presenting an easily accessible linear narrative, we instead have a Gysin-esque mash up of imagery to explore and unravel. Each panel contains a picture that is capable of standing alone, but in this format, they instead enter into a dialogue with the neighbouring panel and create something which veers from the playful and spiritually-uplifting to the disorienting and anxiety-inducing.
The show is on display at Harvey Nichols, 27 Philadelphia St, Quakers Friars, Bristol BS1 3BZ.
Photo credit: feralthings