May/June 2008
Jessica Holmes and Kasper Pincis

Private View Sat 24th May 5pm to 8pm
Exhibition opens Saturdays only 10am to 4pm, 24th, 31st May, 7th,  14th June

Kasper Pincis’ work is quite earnest in its exploration of an emotional territory located somewhere between the macho heroism of mountain climbers and polar explorers of the fifties and sixties, and a kind of pathos and camp brought about subsequently by the single minded pursuit of these heroics.  This particular sensibility is manifest in his biggest literary influence, the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau, where outdoorsmanship meets homeliness, and grand, heroic aphorisms meet solitude and vegetarianism.

The work itself is more likely to focus on the method, and ‘stuff’ of its execution, rather than the particularity of its subject matter, playing with the language of the aesthetics of various subjects.  The aesthetic languages of philosophy, academia and exploration are what the artist uses directly, as a way of hinting at any supposed narrative, the way that imaginary, but meticulously observed book covers do in Wes Anderson films such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zisou.

Jessica Holmes explores the relationship between the human experience and received ideas of landscape, where the natural world has been garnished with the opulence and vanity of travel, and the ever-present search for the exotic.

Painted on fragile paper, obsessively detailed rock formations -
universal, uniform and timeless - are patterned with a limpid fractal maze of mosses and lichens, through which the eye travels without hope of a destination. Images reminiscent of the Dutch vanitas tradition or academic botanical painting are easily recognisable, but without fixed planes and dimensions they become uncanny and disorientating.

The traveller is unable to distinguish the familiar from the alien as perspective and meaning disappear beneath the weight of repetition.