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Drawn in Cursive

Sean Edwards

SEAN EDWARDS
Drawn in Cursive
08.12.2013 > 09.03.2014

The exhibition Drawn in Cursive was conceived as an installation trilogy, in which Sean Edwards (1980) responds to the architecture and space-history of three different exhibition venues. He rethinks and reinterprets his presentations and builds on a key mechanism of his artistic method: the transfer and careful selection of all sorts of objects and sculptures, which he transports from his studio archives. The first part of this trilogy was shown in Chapter, housed in a former Victorian school in his hometown of Cardiff during the summer. In the autumn of 2014, the installation will appear in a different form in Mostyn in Llandudno, Wales.

The starting point of the exhibition in Netwerk Studio is a printed manual from a portable 4-track cassette recorder that serves as a passe-partout for the reading of the work. Central to the exhibition is the transformation of artistic intuition to intention through the process of exhibiting. Just as a modernist painter or a singer-songwriter freely experiments with sketched material, so too will Sean Edwards utilise his artistic intuition and playfulness in composing his presentations: analogous to the release of a record and the 4-track recordings that precede it as an auditory sketchbook. What interests the artist’s in particular, is the added value of the viewer to the completion of the work of art as such.

Sean Edwards’ initial response concerning the portion of the exhibition space behind the glass wall is a quest to break through the visual accessibility that the open space presents itself to the visitor. Building on the presence of two doors, he creates a monumental blockade of sculptural elements that on the one hand duplicates the space, while on the other hand creates a possibility for new for interpretations. The minimalist looking sculptural structure was inspired by a dual bookcase that appeared in a found photograph of author Martin Amis and evokes in the space the soothing nature of an archetypal landscape in Wales. On the one hand, the composition is subtly affected by the construction of the floor panels; on the other hand it manipulates the view of the visitor in the direction of the exceptional architectural construction of the ceiling, which usually remains hidden from view. Elsewhere in the space Edwards dissects the floor structure in a sheer archaeological movement to expose the history of the area and to integrate it into the new work. The allure to constantly zoom in and switch back from micro to macro levels is also a characteristic of the work of Sean Edwards. Throughout his oeuvre the urge for the creation of sculptural works looms large. Even if he uses a different medium such as video, tactility and physicality spontaneously assumes the foreground.

In the second part of the room, created by Edwards, three small sculptures play the lead role and reveal a turning point in the process of the artist. The enlarged photographic representations of the three sculptures suggest a new experimental form of visual artistic communication, and dealing with the DNA of the artist’s archive as a starting point for the creation of new works.

Sean Edwards graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Wales in 2003 and at the Slade School of Art in London in 2005. He has won several awards, including the Creative Wales Award in 2010 and participated in several group exhibitions internationally, including at Lisson Gallery, London (2009) and Wall Space, New York (2010). His first major solo exhibition in the UK took place in the public space of the Maelfa Shopping Centre in Cardiff commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol (2011). He was previously a guest in Netwerk when he participated in the group exhibition Radical Autonomy / Nieuwe werelden van niks (2011). The Tanya Leighton Gallery in Berlin and Limoncello Gallery in London represent Edwards. He lives and works in Abergavenny, Wales.