Paul Sloan

Until Never
Hosier Lane Australia
November 18 - December 19 2009

Paul Sloan’s work appears to me, tho it always appears differently, each time, as a kind of stirring of the Visual Imaginary of our epoch: an extending repertoire of images and classes of imagery is thrown up. This is seemingly done with a speed that precludes censorship or directed selection.

Of course, one wonders how true this is. But the results seem wonderfully free and uncensored by any governing anxiety of the ravishing super-ego or self-consciousness. The images are from nature, from urban living, and they range over objects, vignetted ‘scenes’, the generic, the logo, the branded, the directly and very closely perceived.

One of the beauties of the equivalence that this enforces is that things often experienced as generic—hardly experienced at all, because we are so familiar with them, or experienced with a brief shiver of distaste—are brought back to us revived and magically full of charm.

Or they appear as not quite so recognisable (not so immediately recognisable as either friend or foe). And they appear thus amongst images more conventionally acceptable as beautiful, interesting or whatever. Of course, “conventionally” begs some argument, some interrogation.

And this is the underlying point of Sloan’s quick, considering eye and hand: in a world that is visually saturated, the convention changes all the time. Paul Sloan’s exhibitions surf the wave of this change in fashion, in the ‘valency’ or currency of certain images, and they work to accelerate, disrupt and query these waves and tides and eddies within our culture.

Ken Bolton 2009

ABOUT PAUL SLOAN
Paul Sloan studied painting at RMIT in Melbourne, where he received a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Honours. In 2008, he undertook a residency in Shanghai and an exhibition in Dublin. Paul Sloan has exhibited widely in Australia and also in London, Prague, Dublin, & Shanghai. His work is held in private and public collections.