A new exhibition at the Ingleby Gallery, until 19th of April 2014.
Owen specialises in a kind of elegant vandalism. By reducing his subjects he delicately examines the essential qualities of an object or image, transforming their entire meaning and presenting the viewer with the curiously unexpected. Jonathan Owen’s work, in both two and three dimensions, involves reducing and rethinking existing objects and images. He employs a kind of elegant vandalism to reconstruct and reinvent his ‘material’, transforming something found into something new.
Primarily on the first floor gallery Jonathan Owen’s latest exhibition is a well thought out study of metamorphosis, beautifully presented subversion.
Owen’s “drawings” begin as photographs found in books. Working very slowly, Owen erases layers of ink, gently removing elements of the original to leave a ghostly trace of what was there before and creating a new narrative within the pre-existing image.
These I found to be particularly successful – half remembered film scene stills which have the ghosts of the past, some of the trace vitality of the actors just visible.
Owen’s sculptures begin as relics of another time: 19th Century marble statues that he re-carves into a disjointed, reduced version of the original form, presenting an unsolvable yet innately intriguing puzzle. Re-invigorated versions of their original selves. While delicately examining the essential qualities of what was formerly there, Owen skilfully presents the viewer with a curious and unexpected new form.
Initially quite shocking to see a classical sculpture carved up – the elegant limbs carved into chunky chains links, a profile pierced to contain a crude version of a chinese puzzle ball. Whilst they are intriguing I can’t help but wonder which form would have the longer life span the original or the surreal?