MART Gallery & Studios – Providing Creative Platforms
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Curated by Ciara Scanlan
26 August – 18 September 2020
MART Gallery is delighted to present Until It’s Time For You To Go – a new solo exhibition from artist Andrew Carson.
‘I never wanted to build a “body of work,” but to preserve these, our bodies, breathing and unaccounted for, inside the work. Take it or leave it. The body, I mean.’
– Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
This body of work explores moments of intimacy and connection between queer bodies. Through drawing, sound and text this exhibition unfolds intimate acts and feelings of closeness in casual circumstances, an impermissible situation within the current social restrictions.
A series of digitally rendered drawings of the hands of five male casual sexual partners, reference Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. An iconic image embedded in, and inextricable from, definitions of communion, creation and humanity. The drawings reveal the limits of the process of their technological creation through glitches and malfunctions. Hypothetically capable of rendering the “perfect” drawing, the outputs convey a mimicry of human capability for error. The simulacra of bodily creation through digital methods references the disjointed nature of the sexual encounters that began the work, reducing the intimate act to a meaningless transactional reproduction.
These drawings unite with the sound playing in the gallery space. To create a symphony of lovers past, the artist asked these five dalliances for their DNA samples that he then processed to create music extracted from their individual genetic code. The music you hear is a codified expression of the individuals’ genetic code. DNA markers are assigned specific notes before being algorithmically harmonised. The music is the song of the disembodied body, separated from its original context, imbued with its own agency.
About the Artist
At the core of Andrew Carson’s practice is the exploration of the body and interpersonal interactions through the mediums of digital technology. Examining social structures, systems, and methods of communication, he is interested in the use and effects of digital devices and social media as the modern ubiquitous means of contact.
Influenced by Transhumanist thought, questions that continuously arise for Carson include; how do we reconcile virtual and physical realities, and can we overcome the psychological distances inherent in digital interaction?
Carson’s work is installation based, often as a response to, and in conversation with, specified spaces. He works in a variety of media, including digital sound and image, print, and paper.
Andrew Carson is based in Dublin, recently finished an MFA in NCAD in 2019, having graduated from DIT with a BA Fine Art in 2010. He has shown in solo and group exhibitions extensively around Ireland, the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain, Poland and Japan. His work is featured in private and the OPW state collections.
