The Decadent Animal

About

'Seven years since his last solo exhibition in London,  Joseph returns from Germany and proudly presents his latest body of work titled ‘The Decadent Animal’ with Well Hung gallery in Hoxton. These bold new compositions indulge the aesthetic and ethos of artists from the decadent movement which reached its pinnacle in Berlin in the 1930's. He draws upon iconography and themes evocative of this period (particularly theatre and film of the 1920’s) as well as his own experiences from living there, as a vehicle to explore the human condition.

Defiantly analogue in the advent of Dataism, Loughborough questions whether we are becoming that redundant animal whilst simultaneously exploring the nature of opulence, desire and fear. The rendering of the pieces fluctuates between expressive gesture and a critical layering of gold leaf and thick oil into flat geometrical compositions. A language or symbology seems to evolve from retrieving chaotic and automatic marks made during the primary stages of the drawing giving them an almost musical quality. This echoes criteria from the Dramatic Intermezzo within the symbolist manifesto. This series ambitiously treads new ground within the paradigms associated to Loughborough’s visual language.'