SV Randall / Embers to Ashes

EMBERS TO ASHES

What is the digital shadow?

If you leave your LCD fixated on one image for too long faintly obscured degradations of shadowy images can be burnt into the screen. Murky remnants linger where forms were once represented resulting in ashen, ghost-like images perpetually permeating through the surface. Just as ancient crusaders might carve inscriptions into stone, or lusty teenage lovers might scratch their initials enveloped by a heart into a tree trunk, these low fidelity residues of logos, and over-watched images insistently linger etched into both object and memory.

In his recent exhibition Embers to Ashes, SV Randall presents new sculptures that re-contextualize various cultural and social histories attached to seemingly diverse matter. This collection of work collages found materials including: clothing display racks, satellite dishes, chains, protective armor from the middle-ages, yucca flowers, ash, TV monitors and scoria (a type of rock formed from magma during volcano eruptions).

The works on display merge antiquated emblems from the past such as the fragmented suit of armor with contemporary technologies such as the LCD screens, satellite dishes, and display racks as a way to amplify and enable Randall’s interest in the established conventions and modes of taxonomy, display, and mimicry. Using fine rock powder collected from inactive volcanoes, as a surface treatment on many of the objects, the artist forges symbolic materiality into a soup of formal chaos. Embers to Ashes blurs the line between fact and fiction and proposes an equivalence between consumerism, communication, and innate materiality through an aesthetically cult-like lens.