Aaron Graham Wheat Paste Grids artwork
Aaron Graham – Wheat Paste Grids

Aaron Graham – Wheat Paste Grids


19 February – 22 August 2015

VIEW EXHIBITION: room.thecomposingrooms.com/03

This isn’t the first series of ‘Wheat Paste Grids’ by Aaron Graham. They are free, online for anyone to print and paste up. The previous series is called ‘Herbert Hoover On Mount Rushmore’ mainly composed out of movie posters, which go through several layers of processing by hand, flame, pen, dye, paint, scissors, computer, scanner, etc. In Evidence Test the series uses randomly found YouTube videos as a starting point, the voices from which are decoded into text using google, often mistakenly and poetically. These texts then form a compositional element with a similar array of processes to the previous series, as well as coming into contact with other objects including clothes, cables, hair and plant life.

The grids are made from nine A4 pages, and the objects depicted, more or less correspond to their original sizes. Print, share, enjoy.

The following is an abstract Q & A between Ché Zara Blomfield and Aaron Graham:

Ché:
Do we feel disappointed by the white cube? In the images of the white cube its whiter, more cubey, and you don’t have to go there. Less effort. Is it dead because we can no longer believe that the space the white walls provide is removed, detached, pure? Is it because we can’t deny it as just another node in the network? Imaged, the gallery’s attention is trafficked along with all other accessible information. Information that might be more pressing.

Artwork depicted within fetishised spaces, with awareness or naively, show their best side. The glamor shot, demanding as much of any attention as possible. All images of artwork behave as advertisements for their network, which includes their physical selves, belonging to a cluttered and clunky physical world.

The physical context for the work of Art only provides as archive, storage, a graveyard, an economic function. Occasionally as a moment to be captured by an eye or camera. Animated, selfied, networked: the work of Art left the white cube. It is here alive in fleshy human brains. Wandering the streets of downtown NYC, in night buses between cities in Germany, in the back of trucks, on beaches in NZ, between houses in suburbia and in bars between sips of beer, on Instagram feeds, lighting up faces as they lay in beds in subsidised rooms.

Is it now more interesting to see art, even depicted, outside, rather than in a gallery? Has everything that could possibly be put into a gallery been put there? Are we just bored of the homogenising effects of the tube lighting and flash photography, the wide angles: the context?

Maybe we are just so busy with life that the sacred space for art is outdated. Like the church. We can go on believing that there is something greater and higher that can be accomplished by visiting spaces reserved for certain ceremonies, with beliefs attached. Or we can go into the world, and have art entwined with those details of life we cannot depart from. Maybe then art can really be in life. Engaged with things we care about, not just for the selected few who are able to acquire artworks for their homes, alongside their partners and children, dogs and morals.

Aaron:
I don’t know the name, but there is developmental stage that babies and toddlers go through. It is when they begin to realize that the world is larger than their immediate surroundings. They begin to crawl and walk away from their parents testing the limits of their world.

These wheat paste pieces are crawling out of the gallery door curious to see how far they can go but also comfortable with the warm glow of their parents florescent lights and white walls. evidence. There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.

I think of these pieces as flies buzzing above a highway. You can see them, they are impossible to hold. You smash into them in your truck and they become flattened on your windshield forming an image. It must be scraped off to be removed.

The Wheat Paste Pieces are everywhere and nowhere.

Aaron Graham – www.aaron-graham.com

Born in New York, NY, 1990 – lives and works in Manhattan

Education: 2013 BFA, The Cooper Union, New York, NY

AARON GRAHAM

Aaron Graham Wheat Paste Grid artwork
Aaron Graham – Hobby Lobby Wheat Paste Grid