Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Phoenix Arts, Leicester
27 October – 7 December
Reviewed by: Carol Leeming
Carl Rowe's work is built on a strong mixed-media background and has a photo-graphic conviction, offering seductive digitally-rendered images. The seven lightboxes in 'Domestic Haz-Chem' are derived from assigned industrial symbols used to denote chemical hazards. We are forced to abandon the casual gaze, focusing instead on the secreted dangers within the image. As such they evoke mixed feelings and thoughts.
For example, Danger presents a provocative barrier with its giant 'X' symbol superimposed onto a games console. Inherent is the notion of mechanistic attachments: screws and bolts signify a human dependence on computer games and their promise of vicarious thrills. Corrosive offers the silently judging weighing scales, the word 'die' emphatically emblazoned within 'diet'. I think of anorexia, body fascism. The graphic chemical symbols clearly shows the dissolving of human flesh. Perfume bottles act as ciphers of a cosmetics industry bound up with surgery procedures such as botox, liposuction and other flesh modifications. Poison is a disturbing piece that presses our visceral buttons very hard. It contains a dark green citrus fruit with a dark brown interior, complete with 'skull and cross bones' death symbol. Is this the future of 'Frankenstein foods' – from genetically modified crops and preternatural food chain aberrations?
On balance, this work seems prophetic. Whilst engendering wonder (as a profound sense of doubt) about our lifestyle and everyday things, I have a somewhat contrary and ambivalent stance in response to the artist's statement, which states: "There is no message in my work", and no "messianic undercurrent". In utilising fundamentally prescriptive industrial symbols and signs, they only serve to emphasise how the work is suffused with ethical/moral admonishments. It is therefore proclamatory but tempered with an endearing obliqueness. Well worth going to see.
Writer detail:
Carol Leeming
Venue detail:
Phoenix Arts
21 Upper Brown Street, LEICESTER LE1 5TE
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