About the Exhibition
Building on its previous successes, the fourth Jennifer Lauren Gallery offering featured three artists, all sharing their memories in an explosion of colour, line and form - Ben Wilson, known as the chewing gum man, from the UK; Garrol Gayden from LAND Gallery in New York and Robert Fischer from Geyso20 in Germany. This diverse exhibition drew on the Gallery Director’s interest in text within artwork, its legibility and its purpose. Director Jennifer Gilbert said:
“Ever since my degree I have been interested in how text is used within artwork, and whether messages are subtly or openly made through this medium. These three artists use text and symbols in varying ways to either explain or narrate their ideas, or in Robert Fischer’s case we, as the audience, are left to make our own decisions on what his symbols and letters are perhaps meant to illustrate.”
Ben Wilson (b.1963) is an English wood carver creating huge wooden sculptures in his garden in London and also in Finland, Australia and the USA. However, he is better known as the chewing gum man, where, since 1998, he has created tiny works of art painted onto chewing gum that he finds on the pavement. To create the chewing gum paintings Wilson first heats the chewing gum with a small blowtorch, then coats the gum with three layers of acrylic enamel. He uses special acrylic paints, finishing each with a clear lacquer seal. No payment is taken for these.
Garrol Gayden (b.1960) creates work that focuses on New York City’s Coney Island. The Brooklyn based artist first visited Coney Island at the age of seven, and, since starting at LAND Gallery in 2005, Gayden has remained pre-occupied with this trip and his ride on the park’s ‘Spook-a-Rama.’
From the age of five, Gayden was fixated by the television and drew not only the characters from popular TV shows, but layered this with the letters and words he saw on the screen too. The use of text interwoven with figurative drawings remains the signature look of his artworks to this day. Gayden is a very talkative man, chatting about his work whilst drawing (both to himself and to others) and these phrases are often incorporated into his artworks.
In contrast Robert Fischer (b.1976) is unable to communicate about his artwork, leaving the centre and audiences to make their own judgments. Since 2004, Fischer has attended the art studio two days a week, taking several weeks and sometimes months to complete one piece.
Fischer works in a combination of pencil, crayon and felt pen. It is said that he begins his drawings with a graphic framework that reminds audiences of houses, building plans or machines. He then covers his artworks with lines, letters, and symbols, with several of the letters appearing seemingly backwards on the paper.
With thanks to Sophia Cosmadopoulos from LAND Gallery, Rachel Cohen from NAP Projects and Nina Roskamp from Geyso20 for their help in liaising with the artists for this exhibition.