Jonas Ranson - Deus Ex Machina

About

Jonas Ranson's art is drawn to the marginal and hence subversive nature of supernatural themes, the ideas and symbolism of the occult and its association with the more disreputable forms of popular entertainment. Taken from disparate yet analogous influences, works attempt to coalesce in an allusion to invented cultural interpretations of good and evil, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation. Using permutations of iconographic and architectural languages, pieces often take the form of a totemic frieze, describing imagined technological and structural ‘episodes'. The resulting compositions create an arcane and inverted perspective to bear on the entirety of the spectacular world. An accumulation of historical research has formed the basis for this configuration, one in which associations between religious constructions, quasiscience and fictional architecture are a reoccurring feature. Current works and those intended for Deus Ex Machina, are conceived from the enquiry and meticulous hand drawing of both primitive and modern architectural and figurative sources. The eventual prints are then achieved through subsequent treatment in both digital conversion and photographic silkscreen technique. Although historically informed, the eventual aim is one that will transform and generate new spectacle. The message is one of subverted cultural elucidations of history. The title of the show, the Latin phrase Deus ex machina literally meaning ‘god from the machine', comes to English usage from Horace's Ars Poetica, where he instructs poets that they must never resort to a god