Michael
Elion’s work deals with aesthetics and visual perception.
The highly formal content is drawn largely from the natural world.
His interest in representation and language, and their relationship
to aesthetics, come together in two seemingly antithetical works. “Drexel”,
a microscopic portrait photograph of a fly, blown up to 3m2,
confronts “Kate”, a 2m2 canvas painted black, with
the words “KATE MOSS”emblazoned on the surface in
gold-leaf. Of these conflicting aesthetics Elion says he’s “setting
up a dialectic between a predominantly formal aesthetic that
is fascinatingly attractive, yet ugly at the same time, with
a pure representation of iconic human beauty”. Here,
language, image and the imagination compete for similar aesthetic
territory in the mind. And, what’s in a name? This attempt
at conjuring ambivalence in the viewer reflects Michael’s
interest in the mechanics of visual perception and the nature
of form in cognitive processes.
Elion’s interest in visual perception is further explored
in “Checkmate”, four monochrome, wall- mounted aquariums.
Two are black and two white (arranged in chequer pattern), and
each has a tropical fish of the opposite colour swimming in
the space of the ‘canvas’. In this contrived juxtaposition
of black and white elements Elion establishes an irreconcilable,
monochrome disjuncture that “defies the inherent desire
of the brain for order”. The fact that the fish are alive
and moving accentuates a sense of irreconcilability.
Elion’s use of juxtapostion in the presentation of different
works serves as an auxilliary perceptual tool. His film “Phenomenon
# 2: Questions About God”, derived from refelctions in
water, is an ethereal flow of pink and blue light. This diaphonous
imagery is counterbalanced by “Onyx Honey”, a large
slab of highly patterned translucent rock, gently glowing off
a lightbox. Each work acts as a perceptual prosthesis for the
other.
Finally “Slick: Oil, Painting” was motivated by a
desire to maintiain the seductive tactility of a freshly painted
surface. It consists of a 1,8m x 1,8m liquid surface with
black engine oil continuously falling (being pumped) over a
vertical, wall-mounted plane.
“The oil is painting...” and in so doing the work
subverts the dilemma of stasis in the painted surface by transferring
authorship to the materials themselves. |
