Dark, enigmatic, cryptic, ambiguous; words often used to describe the works of John Currin, those manifestations of an artist on the peripheries of artistic vision. Currin describes his work as an intuitive process, by which the subject and medium of each piece slowly morph and accumulate into the surreal.
By their very nature Currins works are sullied by the elements, their subjects emerging through the textures of time. They reference things we may consider unworthy, like rust or graffiti, like decrepit walls and shattered glass. Here the elements of our neglect, the residues of subversive acts or violence, become the underpainting upon which the works are built. Those undercurrents coexist with classic form and sweeping vistas; the decrepit and the 'beautiful,' their boundaries shadowy and vague.
In this way Currin perverts the thickness of history, relocating it and its mesh of references. Here he creates a carnivalesque world where the rational and the irrational, the celebrated and the obscure, the beautiful and the grotesque, are brought together in a vigorous state of play.
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