[ Nothing need be ugly]

 A young mans wanders to all sorts of exhibitions and trips to the places where art is all that’s talked about.  A visit to Victoria Miro Gallery on the last day of Alex Hartley’s exhibition ‘ The world is still big’.  | By Teucer.

© Victoria Miro - Alex Hartley  Imagine there is a God, 2011.
 Constructed mixed media on C-type photograph. 100x125 cm

I had the ever so fortunate window of opportunity to be perplexed by the sort of bricolage artwork where the 49-year-old artist poses earnest questions though the micro-cosmos created by the dialectic conversation of the landscapes used as footing for his architectural models affixed in an almost natural- looking manner.

Viewers are revered and for an instant feel the minuteness of human creation which concurrently, in the almost parley between the imposing landscape and the evident human intervention, is celebrated for the ability of now perceiving the proposed outcomes as a real probability.

© Victoria Miro - Alex Hartley Outpost, 2011
 Constructed mixed media on C-type photograph 150x120x6 cm

Alex Hartley alludes to the now abolished 60’s experimental artists commune Drop City, and continues to sustain somewhat of the now symbolic nature of it which reflects on alternative living where artists lived within their works of art. Hartley's work corresponds comme il faut to Drop City’s beliefs by constructing his ‘Dropper’ floating over the pond of the gallery’s garden where he settled for the duration of the exhibition.

© Victoria Miro -  Alex Hartley, Dropper, 2011. Instalattion Victoria Miro 2011.

Sensing the universe that Hartley creates through his ever so compelling work, one starts to comprehend the language though which he communicates his belief. Within it a variant definition of habitat is proposed where there are no boundaries or ground rules but rather utilitarianism always confident within the purest form of  an esthétique élevée.

[ read the exhibition's press release here ]