Jack Lawler's "You Want To Get There First, I Want To Get There Last."
Currently on view at NO Gallery in New York City until December 4th, 2022 is artist Jack Lawler's solo exhibition, "You Want To Get There First, I Want To Get There Last."
In this exhibition, the artist will present three new paintings which have taken almost two years to complete. The works take reference from what were once images of the future that quickly became antiquated, influencing a body of work that owes as much of its visual language to mosaic as it does to early digital imagery.
These new paintings mark a departure from Lawler’s previous works which utilized impasto painting to produce heavily textured reimagining of imagery cribbed from early clip art, video games and digital graphics. Lawler has eschewed the direct nature of these works in favor of a process more closely mirroring a dot matrix printer, redesigning source imagery as a printer’s firmware would before hand sculpting each individual dot with oil paint. The labour acts as a bridge between the classical, romantic history of oil painting and the obsolete-fantasy landscapes the artist renders. If the artists of the European Renaissance were attempting to show God their appreciation for intelligent design through their use of light, perspective and composition, Lawler’s new works are a wry smile towards the beauty and warmth of nostalgia as represented in the aesthetics of obsolete technologies.
Embodying a past aesthetic for potential futures, these three paintings evoke a sense of displaced nostalgia. There is no attempt to represent specific real life situations, instead operating on a surreal dream-logic to entangle the viewer in a space which inhabits remembered and invented narratives simultaneously.
THE SUPERSONIC ART SHOP | FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM