Anthony Lister - Smells Like White-Out
Nov 02 - Dec 04
"Picture this, a dumpster
brimming with broken mirror glass, reflections within reflections within
reflections. A mind gone mad, our mind, directed, focused, perceiving.
What of it, this fractured montage, this cranial blast.
Science has quested, separating facts from fiction, dismembering hearsay
and superstition. Science cut our life bond and tethered it to reason
and logic. It bore a child, Digital technology. The sun of Science rose
to power on the shoulders of capitalism. Digital is Godzilla, War of
the Worlds and the T-1000 all at once, morphing, insatiable. Discombobulated
we slouch, couched in our homes, unable to agree, unable to disagree.
Overwhelmed by perception.
In white paint Lister overcoats living imagery with veiled white screens. Viewers try to look behind the screens that mask the evolutionary genesis of the finished picture. Observers try and glimpse into the depths of Anthony's consciousness, as it resides reflected in brush marked strokes on the canvas, to no avail. The audience is captivated by the provocative fragments of subjects left unconcealed and wonders at the significance of the final image. Each canvas has its place in the time line of Lister's life, revealing his passing interests, social consciousness, and intents.
Lately Lister's been appropriating people's personal property, commanding its image as his own. In his newest paintings, portraits of anonymous suitors are embalmed with ephemeral black lined tattoos. Waif-like images of dragons, fearful and delinquent, are scrawled like graffiti onto the unsuspecting bodies of trusting patrons. Neither the image of the tattoo or the subject rightfully belongs to Anthony. Nor has he earned them any more than he has taken them and used them as his own.
Lister argues in defence of the works claiming that the tattoos no longer carry any meaning, that they are insignificant. He isn't caring either describing the works as 'pretty pictures'. 'What does a flag or a symbol mean to me?' he writes to me in an online conversation and I suppose he means it to mean nothing.
Modern psychology describes
a person's experience of reality as the experience of a carefully structured
map of the world developed and deliberated upon by us and any other
pervasive intelligences. That we respond in the most part to our self
made, preconceived beliefs and established values personal or economical.
What messages do we receive in today's world from our social environments
what lessons do we learn? Where will these new maps take us?"
Rhett Haverly, 2005
