The work of Geoff McFetridge is concerned with the human condition. He engages existence and semiotics from a curious, pragmatic, poetic and personal point of departure. His paintings, drawings and sculptures often (quite literally) circle around topics such as beginning and end, relation and understanding, perception, the transcendental and the unconscious. But in McFetridge’s work these common human themes are investigated with the lightness of an intuitive graphic vocabulary. Complex and dense while equally fragile and sparse, McFetridge’s visual language is dance and mountaineering: heavy in preparation, light in execution.
On a raw canvas a couple embrace and fade to bright blue geometry, or vice versa, depending on the mind of the beholder. PSYCHOTOMIMETICONS, 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 70x84 cm. The figurative merges with the abstract and transforms into a new lexicon beyond the confinements of verbal and written language. The shape has life and we recognize it with empathy. Or some will. Keeping your eyes and mind open is prerequisite for fully engaging with McFetridge’s art. Intuition is not to be mistaken for easy.
A right hand, a photocopy of Geoff’s dad’s hand in the memory of Geoff, becomes a left hand, a wrong hand, transformed to a pallet hand, a colour field, a painter’s map, in a painting on raw canvas. The generational hand. MY LEFT IS YOUR RIGHT (ALWAYS), 2018, Acrylic on canvas. 213 x 183 cm. A giant hand on a canvas that recalls the first paintings ever made on cave walls. Circles of meaning that spiral into parallel perspectives.
Coming Back Is Half The Tripconsists of 8 paintings on canvas and a sculpture group of animal forms in powder coated steel. The exhibition offers new approaches to cognition. McFetridge ventures on to the ledge of meaning, bringing us with him on a trip that we can sense, but struggle to verbalize. A meditative, empathic state of mind, where we are connected beyond time and words in recognition of our complex existence. Visual art.
Geoff McFetridge, (b. Calgary 1971, Canada) is a Los Angeles based artist and multidisciplinary auteur. Instinctively ignoring creative boundaries, McFetridge has created paintings, drawings and sculpture, poetry and animation, graphics and ceramics, title sequences and artistic direction for movies (Virgin Suicides, Adaptation, Where The Wild Things Are and HER) and wallpaper. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe, America and Japan. Coming Back Is Half the Tripis McFetridge’s fourth solo exhibition with V1 Gallery / Eighteen. A new book of studies for Coming Back Is Half the Tripwill be published later this year by Nieves. In conjunction with the exhibition a new large-scale mural by McFetridge titled As We Improvise We Disappearon the façade of Vesterbrogade 135 – commissioned by Vega and Tuborg – will be inaugurated with an artist talk at Vega Wednesday October 24th. The work is a tribute to music, musicians and music culture.
