Jeremy Hughes
(770) 362-3706
JeremyHughesArt.com
JerJerArt@gmail.com
|
| |
 |
Jeremy Hughes |
Atlanta-based artist Jeremy Hughes (b. 1976, Columbus, Georgia) makes paintings, photos, drawings and performances.
By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a 'corporate world', Hughes produces work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. His work strives to express this concept with the aid of physics and technology while avoiding metaphor.
His paintings demonstrate the extension of life beyond its own subjective limitations and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own cannibalistic and civilized selves. With Plato's allegory of the cave in mind, Hughes presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.
His work urges us to renegotiate painting as being part of a reactive or, at times, autistic medium, often commenting on oppressive themes in our contemporary society. Hughes’ conceptual approach touches on various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring themes can be recognized, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation, and the investigation of the process of expectations.
Hughes' work is an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in painting. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, his works reference post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system. He creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, he tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way and delights in involving the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical.
Directly responding to the surrounding environment, Hughes' work frequently uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. With the use of appropriated materials borrowed from a day-to-day context, he creates with daily, recognizable elements an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position. His works often refer to pop and mass culture. Using both written and drawn symbols, Hughes creates a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined.
|
|
|