VIRGIN
Exhibition
Exhibition
“Transcending our earthly bodies, our data bodies spread forth and multiply weightlessly in the cloud. Reproductions of paintings—populating our feeds and our Photos app—do the same. In an evaporating world, our flesh sits stubbornly… This show, Virgin, is a meditation on painting not as representation but as body in its own right. A figure formed from its own naked materiality; exploring how matter can become active, autonomous, and exposed.” - Morgan Stokes
While the term Virgin may invoke a number of standout pop culture references ranging from Madonna to Clueless and now Lorde, it is a word that has always been synonymous with the perceived value, representation and autonomy of bodies - in both a physical and spiritual sense. Emerging from material and historical enquiries into practices of painting and sculpture, Morgan Stokes’ compelling work examines the framing of the artistic process as a negotiation between object and image, highlighting the agency of materials in creating work that realises a state of embodiment. His new show Virgin explores this tension between the bodily and the existential, considering the value and aesthetic potential of painting and sculpture beyond modes of representation - particularly in this post-internet age characterised by artifice, immateriality and ever evolving notions of ‘realism’.
Beyond the prospect of our slide into virtual reality, Stokes also draws a line towards the religious history of art; merging concepts of the body as a vessel of meaning and purity as well as something vital, driven by presence and sensation. Layered and contained like skin and bone, his works celebrate the raw beauty and ‘purity’ of materials traced with veins and marks of meaning, somehow both muscular and meditative.
Words by Zachary Calleja
While the term Virgin may invoke a number of standout pop culture references ranging from Madonna to Clueless and now Lorde, it is a word that has always been synonymous with the perceived value, representation and autonomy of bodies - in both a physical and spiritual sense. Emerging from material and historical enquiries into practices of painting and sculpture, Morgan Stokes’ compelling work examines the framing of the artistic process as a negotiation between object and image, highlighting the agency of materials in creating work that realises a state of embodiment. His new show Virgin explores this tension between the bodily and the existential, considering the value and aesthetic potential of painting and sculpture beyond modes of representation - particularly in this post-internet age characterised by artifice, immateriality and ever evolving notions of ‘realism’.
Beyond the prospect of our slide into virtual reality, Stokes also draws a line towards the religious history of art; merging concepts of the body as a vessel of meaning and purity as well as something vital, driven by presence and sensation. Layered and contained like skin and bone, his works celebrate the raw beauty and ‘purity’ of materials traced with veins and marks of meaning, somehow both muscular and meditative.
Words by Zachary Calleja
