ROCKY HORTON
"Between Man and Man"
Screen print and acrylic on canvas
10.01. - 23.02.2020
Curated By Malin Barth
Interaction and action are essential parts of the life of any human being, and we have the urge to interact and act. That is a part of our human condition.
Rocky Horton´s recent project is a response to the work Flowers in a Wooden Vessel by Jan Brueghel the Elder created in 1606-07. The signs of human existence are “man with man”.
In this sense life is an existence-communication.
Horton´s work explores the liminal. The work creates an opportunity for a very intricate conversation about the pervasive influence of spiritualism, occultism and psychologically loaded images. The painting dwells upon hope and failure in order to invite us into transcendence. Perhaps as a result of the de-mystification of the post-enlightenment world or the unwillingness to understand the miraculous, to reclaim the images as transcendent and magical. Not just as aestheticized objects. Horton´s own frame of reference might be as Heidegger puts it--oneself in a kind of spiritual mirror from which the image of other men is fleetingly reflected.
No one needs to tell the flowers how to obtain the water it needs, nor how to orient itself towards the sun and the light; it does so solely on its own. The same innate tendency exists within humans. Our way of being and doing relates to our surroundings, people and objects partake in this interrelational ‘dance’. Horton´s perception captures what is within the language and what is left for us to discover. At the beginning is relationship; to be sense and encountered. Horton´s originality in this series comes from what inspired him, Flowers in a Wooden Vessel by Jan Brueghel the Elder. He uses variations of this composition over and over again, limiting his color palette until the work presents itself as an altogether new perception. An illuminated light is brought forth in the work and might allude to the invisible forces of the world.
“Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others.” by philosopher Alan Watts
Rocky Horton is a conceptually based multi-disciplinary artist whose spans painting, sculpture, video, and performance. He is an active founding member of COOP, a curatorial collective in Nashville, established in 2010. Since 2003 he has served as a Professor of Art at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Horton received his undergraduate degree from Harding University in Searcy Arkansas and he received an M.F.A. in studio art from West Virginia University.
Courtesy of Chauvet Arts, Nashville, USA.
www.theartscompany.com/rocky-horton-2
List of works:
- "The Empress Salon"
- "The Painting Lovers"
- "Apollo Revealing"