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LARGER VIEW
large scale theatrical paintings. The idealized surface quality and smooth
intent of the source material itself becomes physically flawed and
conceptually corrupted by the humanising process of painting and narrative
reassembly. It is within this process of corruption that the possibility of
ambiguity opens up. In addition to the readymade ‘expressive’ poses of the
magazine models who Ireimagine as vampiric sirens calling the viewer into
the paintings’non-space, found objects are introduced as clues or props and
occasionalbands of borrowed text (from such sources as pop lyrics, make-up
ads orother peoples’ love letters) combine to form a dislocated narrative
where,free from a central plot, I’m left with a structure for interpretative play.
While the aggressively vacuous nature of this game insists on an elaborate
framing of meaningless symbolism, it seems to simultaneously obscure and
act out my personal stories, perhaps using the death mask of media
appropriation as an alibi for the fragile possibility of expressiveness. Or do
these pop-gothic webs expose the paintings’ and perhaps even the
Imaginations’ status as nothing but a personal arrangement of commercially
produced fantasy?
The title slogan ‘WAS IT DESTINY? I DON’T KNOW YET’ (lyrics from Blondie’s
‘I’m Always Touched by Your Presence Dear’) is crudely painted on the left
hand panel of a diptych which has been reworked and remixed from an
earlier painting entitled ‘You’re My Beachy Head’. This cut and paste process
runs right through Glass’s practice from the initial magazine collage
‘maquettes’ from which the paintings are structured to the rearrangement of
elements such as found objects,text, smaller paintings and framed pictures
hung on the main panels. Through this process a fractured narrative is
produced which deliberately fails in its attempt at grandiose personal
‘expressiveness’ and is clearly only able to speak through received images in
a compositional game of endless displacement. Amplifying the
characteristics of the magazine mentality, the posturing, vacuous
sentimentality, glamour and overall aimless seduction become, in Glass’s
work, cheapened and garish to the point of aggression.
