My work explores the way in which environments and landscapes are altered by our society, and nature's ability to reclaim the spaces and the things that we abandon. A number of the works in this series were created using various found materials and imagery collected during way finding walks and drives. They are on one hand a conversation between old-time quilt making and modernist geometric abstraction while on the other a means of exploring the patina of wear and exposure on materials and surfaces.
Some of the patterns that I have chosen to utilize (most directly the block patterning) are traditional quilting designs that can be found in turn of the century quilts. The idea of using bits of discarded material to create elaborate compositions and how uniform shapes can be combined to generate a larger more elaborate form intrigues me. In a way, this is how we experience the world as we go about our daily lives. As we drive down the road, watch television, surf the net or text on our phones. The signs and information we're bombarded with, the people we come in contact with, the bits of conversations that we tune in and out of. After a while no one detail can be isolated amongst the cacophony of images and information, everything seems to blend together and become one continuous grid like blur.
The graffiti that I use in my work are tags that I have collected from past places that I have lived (Austin, New York, Seattle, Barcelona, etc.). I use them to express the idea of the individual voice amongst the cacophony of mass produced imagery and objects that surrounds us all. The worn surfaces that are characteristic of my work are an attempt to give them an "aura" of touch. As an artist and a maker one of the things that I admire most about graffiti is the patina that tagged surfaces acquire and the forum that these surfaces become in facilitating social interaction, dialogue and expression. When a surface has been reclaimed, scrawled over with tags, posted over, painted, re-painted, pissed on, scratched all to hell and left to the elements to fall apart and rot this is when that surface truly attains a history to it, an "Aura" of touch. It becomes a true physical embodiment of the countless hands that have collectivity formed it into being. Standing not only as an artifact of the community from which it came but also as a surrogate for the action that created it.
Jonas Criscoe online gallery
Reconstructed Space is an exhibition of new work from artists Jonas Criscoe and John Diebel opening in April at Rosalux Gallery. In this show Mr. Criscoe, with his graffiti-laced assemblages and Mr. Diebel, through his intricately cut paper collage, examine built environments and the spaces they renegotiate through their interactions with nature and history. The exhibition opens April 6th and runs through the 28th with an opening reception with the artists Saturday, April 6th from 7-10 PM.
