Visentin Fine Art LTD is proud to present Cypher Vision - an online solo presentation of works by British artist Laurence Watchorn. The show will be open on a dedicated platform on www.samuelevisentin.com from June nth to July nth 2024.
In opposition to what Carl Jung called ‘the modern myth of history as infinite progress’, Laurence Watchorn formulates a circular return of sensible forms to imaginative dimensions, articulating a sequence of creative intuitions that transform the immaterial reality of sensibility’s innermost realm into a bridge connecting the visual vocabulary of the human collective unconscious and the material nature of rational communication.
Archaic imagery, animistic philosophies and musical landscapes meld in his work in harmonic sequences of gestural markings and symbolic coded language. The artist speaks about listening to plants and music when painting, especially the Love Frequency (432 Hz), which is said to heighten perception, increase mental clarity and imbue feelings of warmth, comfort and tenderness. He questions whether paintings can act in the same way.
Laurence Watchorn’s shamanic modus operandi lays its roots in the cave art of Lascaux and Altamira, and the visceral, holistic and spiritual mode of image-making they represent. Kandinsky’s concept of Geist or ‘Spirit Within’ is prevalent in Watchorn’s work, where inner worlds are made material and primal impulses of human imagination, stretching back to ancient shamanic cultures, are brought forth.
The artist uses loose raw linens and cotton canvas, mindfully considering the object-hood of his artworks: he rounds their corners and hangs them on hooks a few centimetres from the wall, enabling them to react to the viewers’ movements across the space. His approach to painting comes from the belief that not only objects, places and creatures posses a distinct spiritual essence, but also that the artist and their work become one entity, engaged in an equal synergetic balance of give and take. Feeling and seeing thus transform into receiving and creating, mirroring the artist’s ultimate intention: to sacrifice pre-conceived ideas of control at the altar of art-making, allowing the work to exist in an inconsequential and animistic state of flux.
Similar to the feeling of communion experienced in dancing, Laurence Watchorn aligns his practice with the organic rhythms and forces of nature. Ultimately, he hails a return to an animistic, spiritual mode of life and art-making whereby the ego which fuels the greed, selfishness and apathy of today’s culture is dissolved into a collective, cosmic consciousness.
Laurence Watchorn (b. 1999) graduated from Slade School of Art in 2022. Recent exhibitions include Hannah Lees and Laurence Watchorn at Sim Smith Gallery in 2023 (London) and Skin Crawl at The Bomb Factory (London) in 2022. He’s also the co-founder of OOZ, a music collective based in South-East London, UK.
