JONATHAN BALDOCK “personae”

STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY

 

 

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Jonathan Baldock Works across multiple platforms including sculpture , installation and performance.

 

The English artist Jonathan Baldock has produced a series of large rectangular ceramic tiles that “hover on the edge of figuration”, as Edward Ball has stated. Eyes, noses and mouths are etched and punched into the clay and subsequently finished with colourful glazes that the range from purple to tangerine bright pink to dark grey, inspired rose to bright yellow. Into these visages “on the edge” he has incorporated elements of emojis that populate our contemporary social media exchanges.

They also contain ripples and folds, some with button eyes and ears, some without a nose, others with beady eyes and slits stuffed with straw. We seem to be in a codified world full of unsettling clues but without a clear, final definition, echoing some of the faces that could be found on buildings and hieroglyphics in ancient Peru, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

 

Inspired by these ancient modes of communication, the artist plays with clay’s potencial to communicate forms of meaning that evade verbal articulation. It is these relation between material and meaning that I am interested in. I am very fund of ceramic in general but in baldock’s work we can see how differently we performs on this material, that is actually a very traditional media. These are some features that I would like to be able to, in one way or another, bring to my work.

 

Baldock is also keen to explore the historical and symbolic function of masks in his work. Ceremonial objects have traditionally been used as a means for establishing communication between the sacred and the profane. Invested with spiritual values, one can imagine Baldock’s masks being used as part of a pagan ritual This performative quality is also manifested by the title of the exhibition, once again I am inspired by these artist, in a way where titles Bring value and meaning to the work being showed. Derived from the Latin, “personae” refers to theatrical mask donned by an actor and also represents the multiple aspects of someone’s personality. Baldock uses the masks as a means of exploring the psychological potency of hiding and revealing different facets of one’s identity.