Conor
Walton Brings Memento Mori into the 21st Century
ARTSY
EDITORIAL
BY GRACE-YVETTE GEMMELL
DEC 4TH, 2015 9:52 PM
Conor
Walton, 'Telescope,' 2015
Adding an unexpected gravity to kitsch, Irish artist Conor Walton’s
still life paintings tap into the Old Master tradition of the vanitas
to transform everyday objects, like toys and plastic shopping bags,
into powerful (and playful) reminders of our mortality.
Keeping
Things in Perspective, 2015
Invoking Renaissance cabinets of curiosities and studioli, while deploying
painterly Old Master techniques, Walton’s oil-on-linen paintings
add an element of facetious levity while tapping into traditions of
still life and vanitas paintings. A selection of these paintings,
all executed in the artist’s adept, realist style, are currently
on view in “Conor Walton: The Enemies of Progress” at
CK Contemporary in San Francisco.
Several works include miniature models of modern space technology
like satellites, astronauts, and lunar modules, cheekily set against
an astrological tapestry, dinosaur figurines, or propped on a table
with jumping frogs and a melting clock. Walton also plays with the
use of memento mori (in Latin, “remember that you can die”),
symbols that were included in paintings to serve as reminders of death,
which were most often skulls. He, too, employs skulls in some works,
but also carries the idea into paintings of moldy bread and an unwrapped
bar of chocolate or a stick of butter, invoking ideas of decay and
consumption.
Conor Walton, 'Lego Mondrian,' 2015
Walton seamlessly blends old and new, rendering Renaissance artifacts
together with contemporary objects and settings. Lego Mondrian (2015),
for example, shows a skull and a wall of Lego bricks arranged to resemble
a Mondrian painting. His handling of paint and use of chiaroscuro
harkens back to his Old Master predecessors, but feels decidedly fresh,
capturing elusive contrasts like those between transparency and opaqueness.
Conor
Walton, 'The Joker Wins Again,' 2015
Walton’s visual vignettes seem to satirize the still life tradition
even while paying it respect. Regardless, the reference to mortality
perseveres. In his version of the vanitas, a garish toy dinosaur and
a miniature soldier become commanding harbingers of the effects of
globalization; a cluster of tiny Disney princesses and Marvel comic
figurines serve as distress signals in the face of acts of terrorism;
and a solitary plastic bag of oranges becomes an allusion to impending
and inevitable environmental degeneration. It is in this fusion of
the sobering and the playful that Walton’s still lifes induce
a satisfying visual dissonance, not unlike a memento mori.
—Grace
Gemmell
“Conor
Walton: The Enemies of Progress” is on view at CK Contemporary,
San Francisco, Nov. 7 – Dec. 7, 2015.
Original
article found at:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-conor-walton-brings-memento-mori-into-the-20th-century
