'I don’t want to enter the studio with an idea, I want to arrive at one.’
LOSS OF INFORMATION
At STUDIO23, we are incredibly honoured to show the works of David Hytone (US).
What you’ll see at the exhibition goes beyond a simple explanation or what may be apparent in photographs. Hytone’s body of work often depicts structures and abstracted biomorphic figures that he sees as monuments to the absurdity of the human condition.
His theatrical compositions are references to ideas of unintentional falsification, the way that everything is performance or facade.
Hytone’s work often starts in a different place physically and ends up on the surface of the piece. There is loss of information that happens in many of the methods that he uses, as when he paints on glass and transfers it onto the paper his paintings are constructed from. He comes to see that these processes mirror the way that we look at the world around us.
‘Our lives are like driving in the city. We are not sitting there closely examining every car that goes by. We are navigating traffic. By force of nature and by having to navigate through the world, we can’t pay attention to this flood of information.
Our mind has to process everything in a way that it almost reduces the world to a set of symbols more than actual identifiable individual unique objects.’
‘We exist in a time where there is a lot of cacophony, a lot of noise, a lot of loss of information and a lot of facade.’
‘One of the veils that we need to pull back between contemporary art and its audience is this idea that we have to know everything or have to understand everything that is in front of us, and if we feel confused that that’s a bad thing.
I don’t want to enter the studio with an idea, I want to arrive at one.’
STUDIO23 resonates with David’s reflection on being consumed by information. Our brains are saturated by the constant stream of impressions from daily life and social media. By presenting David’s work, we want to pause, stand still and reflect on the world around us, on its relentless pace, and on how it overwhelms our minds.
David’s work speaks not only to this condition, but also offers a counterpoint. The painstaking hours invested in each piece are proof that humanity can still slow down, reflect, adjust, and savor beauty without being online all the time. This offline exhibition is a tribute to beauty in all its forms, and to detail, craftsmanship, and patience.
