simon morley, "VIRUS"Sept. 10 - Oct. 22, 2005 taguchi fine art, ltd. |
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VIRUS (light) 
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Simon Morley was born in Eastbourne, England in 1958. Got BA of modern history at Mansfield college, Oxford University in 1980 and MA of fine art at Goldsmith's college, University of London in 1998. Based in London, participates artist-in-residence in various places as the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere and the British School in Rome. Besides creating art works, he also curates exhibitions as "Chora (1999)" and "The Wreck of Hope (2000)". He wrote a study on art history, "Writing on the Wall - Word and Image in Modern Art" published by Thames and Hudson in 2003. Word and ImageHis work always deals the relation between word and image as: "word painting (VIRUS series)" - words from certain text are painted with randomly floating multicoloured letters, "signature painting" - a signature by prominent figure is enlarged and painted on the wall of certain place to which the person has relation, "label painting" - hand painted labels to explain works displayed at an exhibition, "book painting" - cover or title page of a book is transcribed on canvas, "postcard painting" - postcards collected from bric-a-brac shops are reproduced on canvas, a work in which photographs of gravestones and words from poems are combined into pairs, a video work showing 10 different mouths saying the last lines of Wordsworth's poem in slow motion without sound, and books published by imaginary publisher, Utopia Press.At his first one man show in Japan, "A Short History of Modern Japanese Fiction" at taguchi fine art, ltd. in 2004, works from "book painting" were exhibited. This time on view are "word paintings (VIRUS series)". VirusThe word "virus" originally means microorganisms which are parasitic on cells of other organisms and proliferate in them. Most of them cause diseases as smallpox or influenza so that we recognize virus as something we should be cautious about.These days we often use this word as a term in computer terminology in the society where every computer system is united by networks each other. Virus is a malicious program which invades through networks and changes or breaks the other programs. In any case, "virus" suggests us violence, disease, defacement, corruption, or subversion. Morley regards "writing" itself as a "virus" on western language since it feeds off speech in order to produce script. In western language, writing has been formed by alteration and destruction of speech. To the contrary, in the East, writing and speech are regarded essentially different and thus developed individually. Morley thinks this dependence on speech and the use of the alphabet is something that fundamentally distinguishes Occidental writing from Oriental writing. Word painting - VIRUS seriesThis series of paintings, in which alphabetical letters are randamly floating on its background in different positions from those in original text, is something allusive and enigmatic, but also quite decorative.The aim of this series of paintings is to make a text illegible, thereby replacing reading by seeing. It seems inevitable that the viewer will seek to make new words out of the random letters they see, thereby actively engaging them in the act of making meaning, and that the shapes of the letters will lead them to speculate about the original sources of the texts. On this occasion, six paintings are exhibited. Three are earlier works, which derive from a speech by Adolf Hitler published in the Degenerate Art catalogue of 1936, and a script of the last page of Samuel Beckett's novel 'The Unnamable' from the 1950's. Other three are recent works which derive from title pages of translations of Japanese novels. Those theme is the same as the one addressed in his last exhibition at taguchi fine art, ltd., taken in a different direction, to blur the distinction between reading and seeing, and also to generate a specific cultural resonance. checklist of the installation 1. VIRUS (Japan I), 2005 acrylic on canvas 122 x 112 cm 2. VIRUS (Japan II), 2005 acrylic on canvas 96.5 x 71.0 cm 3. VIRUS (Japan III), 2005 acrylic on canvas 96.5 x 71.0 cm 4. VIRUS (Gothic), 1999/2000 acrylic on canvas 152.5 x 122.5 cm 5. VIRUS (Light), 1999/2000 acrylic on canvas 122 x 97 cm 6. VIRUS (Dark), 1999/2000 acrylic on canvas 122 x 97 cm |