« ‘Hybridation’ est le mot qui revient le plus souvent lorsque Garth Bowden parle de ses créations. Malgré l'éclectisme de son œuvre, toutes ses pièces présentent des remous violents, comme des greffes en train d'aboutir. Les tableaux de Picasso fusionnent avec Mickey, et le résultat, non content de rappeler les recherches sur le portrait de George Condo, contient une réelle réflexion sur l'acte créatif lui même »… (lire la suite) This article takes a broad look at my work over the past 20 years, exploring recurring themes such as the relationship between humans and animals, popular culture and ‘fine art’, hybrid environments and the ambiguous boundaries between reality and fantasy.
It references early works such as ‘Hamster’ and ‘Modern Art’, both dystopian Disneyesque installations that are early precursors of my current series ‘EclectoMania’ and ‘Pisney’ of Picasso/Disney fusions.
The Hybrid - Double Sex
Our bodies are not discrete and separate entities to the world around us. We merge with and absorb the environment, technology and ideas. We are interdependent beings physically, mentally and culturally in constant exchange with our surroundings.
My work has touched on several of these themes but my current focus is on what takes us into the future and what we take into the future. I question what it is to be human now from the perspective of self and environment, self and sexuality / gender and self and technology.
Taking off where the previous series Fallen Icons left - I continue to explore the hybridisation of the body. Body modification is not new, but technology and where it can lead us and what it can enable is.
Fallen Icons presented a world part animal part human part cartoon. The ambiguous carnivalesque space of masks - role play, power and sexuality. Purity and corrupted innocence.
The series Double Sex - explores a new eroticism - the hyper sexualisation of the body. A merging and collapsing of gender differentiation; a deconstruction of the heteronormative paradigm. Ambiguity and fluidity are increasingly accepted, challenging traditional binary identities as the default setting.
Trends led by the world of pornography and the gaming industry, as well as advances in computer animation, allow increasingly realistic rendering of fantasies. Technology enables the imagination to create new possibilities. New genders.
Combining violent eroticism with the innocence of Disney characters; a world corrupted, carnal, animal, alien and angelic. This series in progress explores the fringes of an evolving world of desire and fantasy. Reality and virtual reality evolving us into future humans.
