About
Jerwood Visual Arts Project Space
Café 171, Jerwood Space, London, SE1 0LN
Jerwood Visual Arts presents new work by London-based artist Rhys Coren. For this exhibition the artist has produced an installation comprised of multiple hand-drawn animations, accompanied by an audio piece by DJs Bahamian Moor.
In a multi-screen installation, individual hand-drawn animations loop independently of one another, as a soundtrack assembled by DJ duo Bahamian Moor plays out through wireless headphones. Choreographed to the beat, each animation is based on the 120 bpm tempo of the soundtrack, setting an underlying rhythm to the installation.
The viewer is an essential mechanism to the work, linking the disparate animations and soundtrack. With the audio piece as backdrop to the imagery, patterns within patterns emerge, animations slip in and out of synchronicity with one another. Individually the animations dance, permanently attuned to the strict tempo set by the soundtrack, complex relationships form and fall apart, punctuated by moments of total lucidity. The work is a self-organising entity, consisting of individual perspectives and personal narratives, fused by the experience of a singular, emotive response to music. Ultimately the clarity established by the installation collapses as the headphones are removed, and the viewer returns to the café setting of the Project Space.
Coren works across animation, painting, writing and audio; influenced by dance music culture, fashion in and surrounding football, story telling, set design, and abstract and experimental film. His processes are specific, complex, and labour-intensive, often at odds with the resulting imagery. At times stripped-back and reduced, at others heavily layered and vivid, Coren's work prompts an imaginative reconstruction of the exhaustive practice of an artist.
