event

THE ADVANTAGES OF FAILURE

18.Sep.08
6-9 PM

Vegas Gallery
THE ADVANTAGES OF FAILURE
64-66 Redchurch Street
London E2 7DP
07726750762 / 02077294819
hello@vegasgallery.co.uk
www.vegasgallery.co.uk
Tube Liverpool Street, Old Street, Aldgate East, Shoreditch / Hoxton

An Urge to Merge

For his solo exhibition at Vegas Gallery, British artist Simon Willems will be showing several paintings which explore themes of escapism, vulnerability, and artificiality versus authenticity. The pieces bring together aesthetic strategies developed in ealier work; the use of reflective and highly textured surfaces, and detailed depictions of non-human subjects whose toy-like sheen challenges viewers' attempts to project meaning and affect onto them. Willem's themes and painterly techniques mesh into holograms that appear alternately and simultaneously as arbitrary combinations and painstakingly choreographed assemblages of imagery and ideas.

In Signature Tuning a Bojangles cowboy clown in ruffled ice cream clothing strums a shrunken guitar whose yellow electrical lead trails out of sight. Mouth height in the black field between the figure's neck and the brim of its hat floats a white thumb sized face, grinning and wearing sunglasses. Wearing ruffled ice cream clothing reminiscent of a Velasquez court jester or a Watteau harlequin musician, Signature Tuning's protagonist strums alone, marooned on a blue surface resembling water or a shiny showroom floor. Surrounding panels of paint hover on an abstract/figurative cusp. At a distance and through scrunched up eyes they connote infinite spaces; water, mountains, sky. The painting's title insinuates a warm up before a performance of oneself. The performer is faceless and desultory, comical and sad. It is plugged into an invisible source, animated by an embedded Caucasian, fingerprint chip and wedged between ersatz terrains that promise and retract infinity, release, and a way out.

Signature Tuning encapsulates themes running through the exhibition, and Willem's previous work, including a preoccupation with vulnerability as both tangible and a mirage. Vulnerability has become a buzz word associated with a wide buffet of contemporary alternative therapies, lifestyles, communities and aspirational spiri