When trying to discern why music is often described as “vague”, American jazz violinist Matt Glaser once noted: it’s not music, which “expresses human experience so specifically”, that is falling short, but of language itself. Although he works in a different creative field altogether, Canadian artist Geoff McFetridge has built much of his career centered around this very thought. Not in terms of music, per say, but in the idea of describing the ineffable through paint and sculpture.
Housed at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, his latest solo exhibition The Organic Interface revolves around the following question — ”How can images explain and communicate thoughts that are in between our understandings?” Displayed across a new series of paintings, drawings, and sculpture, McFetridge looks to bridge his transcendental states into tangible images, in an attempt to understand humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Instead of trying to capture his ideas straightaway on paper, McFetridge thinks of “how a potter places a lump of clay on the wheel.” The bowl changes unpredictably through the grooves of the hands and fingers, in the same way as thoughts can blend with one another, creating unexpected, but inspiring results.
Rather than just free-falling from one thought to another, McFetridge’s latest works explore themes pertaining consciousness, freedom, ethics, and communal interdependence. Painted in his signature muted colors, one of the highlights on display is a diptych of animals and humans jailed together, disparate in their shape and appearance, but united along their cast shadows. The artwork alludes to the precarious relationship humans share with the rest of the animal kingdom — one which the United Nations estimates is only getting worse through the use of fossil fuels and deforestation.
“As the potter makes the bowl there are many states along the way that are neither ”lump of clay” or ”bowl”. When I draw, I like to create work that stays in that place. Pictures of things, before they are captured by language,” McFetridge added. The Organic Interface opened earlier today and will be on view at V1 Gallery until September 23.
In case you missed it, Craig & Karl present first solo exhibition in China.
V1 Gallery
Flæsketorvet 69
1711 København, Denmark
