Gabriel Hartley

(click to expand and enlarge image)

Continuing in the Bloomberg New Contempories vein that I initiated with my last blog about Daniel Pasteiner, this artist became one of my other favorites from 2008. Some of his most interesting and numerous works are his altered postcards. Theres something terrifically nightmarish about the pulpy abstract painted structures superimposed over otherwise lovely images of natural landscapes and picturesque buildings. They could be biological or architectural, or scarier still both - invasive places of habitation that grow over and around whatever surface or being they happen to land on like some macroviral eruption. They remind me of Aaron Curry's From Dwellers (In Vulgar Space) series.

Whilst his postcards suit the Fallen Over cannon and thus my love of readymade/appropiation best, some of his most eye popping works are his sculptures. Like the postcards they remind me of the huge oozing nameless things that Lovecraft fans daydream about. However the inherantly 3dimensional nature of sculpture makes them look like extraplanar animals frozen in our corporeal material universe. They don't look so much made as they do preserved.

http://www.gabrielhartley.co.uk/cv.html

An Introduction to Fallen Over