Morphology

Morphology | The Collage Art of Joel Lambeth

Morphology

760mm x 510mm
Collage on wood
2015
SOLD

Winner 2016 Blackheath Art Society Winter Open Exhibition

“This very geometric abstract work looks at first as if it might be a digital construct and indeed it is possible some design work might owe something to a computer but on close inspection the fabrication of the piece is astonishingly manual. It is a collage of strips of coloured material cut to size and applied to create a vibrant three-dimensional composition. The design is certainly logical in that the basic elements are each expanded cubes throughout with sections cut out and expanded or exploded and yet the effect is magical. It seems to exist somewhere between M.C. Escher and Sol Lewitt. Both of these artists’ designs purport, or are indeed, logical mathematical propositions but both are somehow subverted by a mystical streak.

The American art historian Rosalind Krauss has written about the grid in modern art as an indicator of intellectual content but as in the case of Sol Lewitt she points out that the maths is basic and questionable and the success of the work is more about an obsessive and systematic process that she compares with Becket’s character Malone who spends his time moving pebbles from one pocket to another devising a system which would ensure that he never moved the same stone twice.

I enjoy the obsessive and meticulous nature of the fabrication and the strange expanded architectural structures that this artist has created. They may be logical and indeed they may be buildable in 3d but I doubt it.”

Tony Bond