Alistair Frost, Simone Gilges and Matthew Smith

About

Studio Voltaire is pleased to present a three-person exhibition of new works by Alistair Frost, Simone Gilges and Matthew Smith. Although the artists will present autonomous bodies of work, they share an approach to artists production by working in a variety of media, exploring signs and codes, and playing with (dis)associations, meanings and hidden narratives. Alistair Frost employs imagery depicting a series of recurring images, symbols and signs, combining elemental codes to construct word games, rebuses and connections between words and their visual representation. There is little relation between the quantity or accumulation of these motifs and an understanding of the picture when assembled. Simple motifs which are often rooted in surrealism, such as the umbrella or the bowler hat becomes a palm tree, or martini glass, or a woman's groin repeatedly feature in Frosts' paintings, drawings, prints and slide-shows. Simone Gilges is an artist based in Berlin who works with photography and fabrics to create sculptural reliefs and installation works. Recent works include portraits swathed in fabric alongside objects that exist to destabilise the initial significance of the photographs. In her installations, the artist uses specific moods to suggest techniques of disguise, and questions staged and real scenarios. The combination of single photographs with props and draperies distort the chronological and historical meanings of the photographs. Gilges suggests and implies without providing the spectator with a clear narrative. Matthew Smith's sculptural work is predominantly made from everyday objects, which he them manipulates or transforms with a sleight hand. In previous works, Smith has subtly added to or removed elements from objects such as nails, duvets, record covers, and magazine pages, transforming them in order to destabilise their original presence and function. The sculptures' original purpose seem undermined, rather than deconstructed or rendered functionless, and through this gentle manipulation the objects become an adulterated version of their former selves, stopping some way short of the finality of entropy.