shardcore » painting

Corporate Governance (2011)

shardcore — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:58:57 +0000

Corporate Governance is a phrase used to describe the set of ‘guidelines’ for good business behaviour. The act of commercial enterprise, and Capitalism as a whole, has no explicit moral component, indeed the actions which led to the current financial crisis highlight how big business, motivated by profit, can produce large scale behaviour which many consider to be ‘amoral’ , and perhaps even criminal.

Corporate Governance: Introduction

Corporate governance is an attempt to place an ethical framework around an inherently amoral activity.

Corporate Governance: Negotiation

The three paintings are titled ‘Introduction’, ‘negotiation’ and ‘execution’, representing the ‘sales cycle’ of a business interaction.

Corporate Governance: Execution

These paintings were created for the #offbeige exhibition by Collate Presents

Schrödinger and the cat (2011)

shardcore — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:36:06 +0000

Erwin Schrödinger is considered as one of the founding fathers of quantum physics. He is, of course, most famous for his thought experiment, known as Schrödinger’s cat, an idea he developed while in correspondence with his friend, Albert Einstein . He received a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in 1933.

Acrylic on canvas, 508mm x 406mm

I can find no evidence that he ever actually owned a pet cat, and perhaps since one possible outcome of his thought experiment is the death of the cat, it suggests he wasn’t overly fond of them.

In an attempt to convey the state of uncertainty in which the cat exists, I have painted the animal as a chimeric phantasm, visible fully only from a certain angle.

Atman and Schopenhauer (2011)

shardcore — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:00:54 +0000

Alfred Schopenhauer keeps cropping up here. My picture of him and Hegel even ended up in a Dutch University textbook, however, here I have painted him with one of his pet Poodles.

Acrylic on canvas, 508mm x 406mm

Schopenhauer had a difficult relationship with other people, and in his latter 27 years of his life, preferred the company of his pet poodle, Atman. Or to be more precise, a series of poodles, all called Atman.

In what I like to think of as a piece of German philosophical humour, Atman is the Sanskrit word for the ‘true self’, something that he searched for, through his writings, for his entire life.

Nietzsche and the Horse (2011)

shardcore — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:53:31 +0000

Friedrich Nietzsche was a hugely influential German philosopher. Much misunderstood and misrepresented, he is perhaps best known for his notion of the Will to Power.

I have painted him embracing a horse, a reference to the event which is generally considered to be the point of his mental breakdown .

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect the horse, and then collapsed to the ground.

A Moral Compass (2011)

shardcore — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:12:09 +0000

This latest work is a triptych of paintings inspired by the works of Cranach the Elder, a German Renaissance painter whose naive figurative stylings I find particularly appealing. His preoccupation with mythological and religious imagery succinctly demonstrates the power of visual art in times of widespread illiteracy. Cranach was also a friend of Martin Luther (who’s moral outrage at the corrupt Catholic Church led to a new branch of Christianity).

A Moral Compass (triptych)

The paintings are made on a surface of 1980s comics, which may be considered morality tales in themselves. Comics provide simple stories of good versus evil, echoing the framework of the society they represent – Judeao/Christian moral landscape which in many ways remains unchanged since the Renaissance.

Venus (after Cranach)

I have denied the figures their beauty by replacing their heads with skulls. A reminder that all of us are born condemned to die, that corporality is always hiding just beneath our skin. For those who believe in an ‘afterlife’, how we conduct ourselves inside our fleshy vessels impacts greatly on what happens after death.

Antaeus vs Heracles (after Cranach)

I have placed the paintings in frames of my own construction, embedded with other signifiers of childhood moral gameplay; marbles, toy soldiers and cowboys & indians and other drossy ephemera.

Lucretia (after Cranach)

Cranach painted many religious and mythological subjects throughout his career, which I intend to investigate through a series of paintings – of which this is the first – viewing the contemporary world through the moral lens of the 15th Century Master.

Beneath the void (2010)

shardcore — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 15:54:39 +0000

Thankfully, my general demeanour is relatively upbeat, however, like many others, I am subject to the occasional bout of depression. While every shred of my rational self tries to escape the crushing blanket of hopelessness, it’s no easy feat. It was during a recent episode that I was inspired to create this image.

For me, depression is the feeling of being at the depths of the ocean, beneath a mass of suffocating darkness. I imagined being entwined in the tentacles of a giant octopus, holding me below. And there I remain, until the beast relinquishes his hold, and I may rise back to the surface.

Acrylic on canvas, 762 x 508mm

The General and The Grunt

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:35:05 +0000

I updated these two for Congregation 2010

“The Minotaur of Greek mythology was the result of the union of Pasiphae and a bull. He dwelt inside the labyrinth and devoured anyone who entered. Here the minotaur is presented as an Army General – you can draw your own conclusions.

I have painted this diptych in a deliberately cartoonish style to underline the sense of displacement between our perceptions of war delivered via the media, and the horror of reality.”

“This painting was first produced for MASS in 2008, and shown alongside The General as a response to the senseless, illegal wars being fought in our name.

It’s two years later, we have a hung parliament, we’re still at war – so much for the democratic process.”

Looking for the Light (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:29:38 +0000

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

For some people the very act of contemplation results in even greater uncertainty. Perhaps some truths simply cannot be found by inward reflection alone.

Future Self (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:26:47 +0000

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

Each of us will die, that much is certain. However, our feelings about what happens next are the subject of much debate.

As an atheist, I have no problem accepting the cessation of my consciousness and subsequent decay of my body into it’s constituent elements.

Yet, there’s something primeval about our response of seeing a skeleton – a deep-seated fear of mortality, a calling from the limbic system.

How one choses to rationalise that response perhaps tells us a great deal about questions of faith.

Pixellated Self (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:22:17 +0000

Finally getting around to uploading my paintings for Congregation 2010. Here’s the first of two self portraits.

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

Part of my reasoning behind assuming the pseudonym ‘shardcore’ was provide a fresh identity, unfettered by past (mis)deeds. An identity solely concerned with artistic experimentation.

However, shardcore inhabits the same physical shell as my ‘other’ identity, and my face remains a visual conduit between the two realms.
This painting is an investigation into this conduit, recognisably me to those who know me, but opaque to those who don’t.