Tasteful Thickness

About

‘Tasteful Thickness’ brings together a number of works formed over the past few months. Drawing from films, ‘American Psycho’ and ‘The Man with the X-Ray Eyes’, Ideas of the tangible, physical, veiled and fictitious materialise in to the work. Describing and ascribing material become points of reference in the reading of the work. Everything becomes an image, a reference, outside of itself. Images allude to object-ness, and objects become images. Within an off-white setting, images blend and frameworks expand or close in. What are we looking at, where does it end or begin? Frameworks project familiar ideas of imagery, but isn’t a frame just an outline? 

The ‘digestion of an image’ is a term, which sits within the works. Varying from apparent one-liners, to slow burners. Slowly filling associations and certain readings which can either point within the work or outside. Noting how we read an image and digest within our minds, Steven observes the idea of an image, using food as metaphors for possible ways of reading, gazing and digesting an image.

Steven brings a focus upon his process of thinking. Not necessarily the production, but way in front. Many works are fabricated outside of the studio, and for the few made in the studio, the thinking of an idea is substantially longer than the making. The idea is primary, with aesthetics a bi-product of ‘visual art’. Materiality is something, which doesn’t just exist within the work. Steven believes the processes to get to the artwork are equally physical and important in the reading of the work. Whether it be emails in accordance with companies for materials, or whether an artwork or image becomes a material to gain another material. The works transcend beyond the visual, referencing a process which is not a physically labored in the work. ‘Materials’ may be hidden, invisible, or even in some cases, not present at all. – Only to be referenced in the materials list. It is this sense of materiality, which activates the work.