Second Skin
AWST & WALTHER
Our drawings have developed over the last two years from small-format works on paper and card to large drawings on canvas. These new works involve a pallet of rough, industrial materials like tar and gloss paint juxtaposed with fragile, ancient materials such as gelatine, feathers and fur. Over several layers, we bring these materials with their contrasts and disruptions into an almost sculptural form on canvas. Once coherent, we seal this material construct with a thin layer of grey, resulting in a monochrome landscape that provides a strong foundation for white line drawings that are developed on the surface in response to what is captured beneath.
Conceptually, the drawings reflect on the incoherence within our society that promotes infinite delusional images of the ‘perfect’ body. Torn out of fashion photographs from magazines, imagined bodies and personal reflections all contribute to the choice of title ‘Second Skin’.
The drawings explore the condition of duality, specifically to the ongoing discussion in our work to the subjects of ‘self’ and ‘other’. They clearly feature two levels of expression – one that is inaccessible material substance underneath a layer of grey, and the other which is liberated and visible on the surface. The use of the colour grey not only unifies and pacifies the material expression beneath, but relates the drawings conceptually to the ‚Grauzone’ or Twilight zone – an undefined or ambiguous area between two distinct states or conditions. This is a colour that we often use in our work, most explicitly in the context of our gelatine sculptures.
Our progression towards this more complex, process-bound method of drawing, which nevertheless maintains the instinctive and thoughtful approach, stems from a strong need to relate our two-dimensional work to our interest in brutal combinations of materials – organic and inorganic, pure and toxic – which reflects something of our experience in this world today. Creating chaos in order to find structure, and throwing ourselves into the unknown in order to gain a deeper metaphysical understanding is typical of our approach towards making art.
