“We are now offered the illusion of modalities: namely, that matter is incorporeal, weightless and exists optically like a mirage”
Clement Greenberg, 1967 (from Art & Objecthood by Michael Fried, Art Forum 1967)

What significance can be found in the structure of something? A skeleton gives shape and coherence to a body. It symbolises the bare essence, the stripped-down truth and thus it also becomes a symbol for the pursuit of authenticity. A skeleton is also death and mortality, like the vanitas, it is a reminder of the transience of life; the temporal against the eternal. Just as the skeletal frame provides both constraint and possibility for movement in a living being, the underlying principles and frameworks in art both limit and liberate.

Following Stokes’ previous exhibition with Curatorial+Co., Skin, which examined the outermost layer, Skeleton flays the surface to examine within. Although the show hums with a naked, elemental current, tensions define the space: lightness vs darkness, lightness vs heaviness, fullness vs emptiness, creation vs destruction, object vs subject. Balance, tone, space and, pertinently, form: the elements of painting have been amputated from one another to be scrutinised in a material dimension. This emphasis on form further serves to underscore a certain physicality thus the show becomes a meditative exploration of not only the medium of painting and what lies beneath it’s surface, but also the visceral act of sharing space with matter. That is to say, Skeleton is an exploration of an unseen essentialness

Evident here is Stokes’ continuing preoccupation in how our mode of perceptions change as the world becomes increasingly mediated by the screen. The works embody a corporeality, they are studies in matter and not images, and can be seen as formal exercises in reduction to understand the vitality of form and material. Echoing a minimalist aesthetic, the works become performers, they must be experienced in a situation aware of a participant and consequently the beholder becomes the subject. Stokes is not only investigating the objecthood of painting, he seeks to imbue matter with a philosophical resonance in an age of the immaterial.  

Morgan Stokes’ artistic practice delves into the mediums of painting and sculpture, deconstructing them to their fundamental elements. Beginning with the traditional building blocks of each; pigment, cloth, stretcher bars, stone, he embarks upon a process of reinterpretation, interrogating the supposed value of each part and its role within the widely understood formula of what makes an artwork. Both literal and philosophical, Skeleton is a dialogue between body and material; a contemplation on what makes a painting in the digital age. Recalling the movements of Arte Povera, Mono-Ha and Material Realism and considered from a post-internet lens, Skeleton transcends the canvas, acting as a meditation on creation and art, the seen and the unseen.

Virtual Gaze has been created with these ideas in mind. The screen is the muse: both its contents and its surface. Each work ruminates on the virtual world through the mediums of painting and sculpture. The works are formal studies into material properties of what comprises a painting or sculpture (for example paint, canvas or

stretcher bars) underscoring them as physical objects and therefore exploring their verisimilitude, their reality versus virtuality. They are not images to scroll past, they are paintings. The sparseness of the works disrupt a traditional reading of art - and digital images - where subtly of texture and materiality become vehicles for meaning. Narrative can be interpreted through material, through perception and light, through the sharing of a unique space and time between human and work. 

The French painter Charles Lapicque said that the creative act should offer as much surprise as life itself. Silk obscures and enhances, offering a tech-esque shimmer and obfuscation. Heavily worked metal sits alongside natural linen beside raw rock, an orgy of cavelike primitivism and sophisticated mechanically-produced synthetic material. The imperfect stitch and the few visible marks become focal points and exist almost as accidents: their existence linger as human question marks, as ontological smudges. 

Artworks are sometimes arranged as a screen may be, constructed from arranged pixels. The composition for the work, ‘Situating our dreams’, was taken from a composition algorithm generator commissioned for and made by a coder in Ukraine. ‘#FFF3D3’ is a combination of studies translating a digital colour (the hex value of the title) into panels using a variety of media and surfaces, interpreting the colour at different times of the day and in different lights. ‘A primal condition’ was created through seeping colour through the reverse of the canvas, using the texture of the paint and material to dictate appearance. Metal works evoke the industrial nature of the screen, but at the same time contradict this perfection through their organic, vulnerable makeup.

Ironically the JPGs of ‘Virtual gaze’ will become the end product in the lifecycle of the works and will be the way the works will be largely viewed and remembered, reproduced any number of times. The philosopher Walter Benjamin said that technology drove a shift from art as something of contemplation to that of distraction because of its reproducibility. Technology directly impacts sense and perception, two factors which ultimately affect “humanity’s entire mode of existence”. In a world where we are the product, where we are endlessly reproduced in the hyperreal, you might wonder what Benjamin would say about humanity’s current mode of existence.

Each painting is a formal study in colour and material, overlaid with marks which appear both accidental yet mechanical, intuitive yet intentional. They strive to be honest and abject yet covertly exist otherwise: marks made by a robot vacuum echo human marks; synthetic iridescent vinyl sits atop raw canvas; contrived organic colours live beside the real thing. Stepping back, the overall effect ranges from introspective and melancholic to sardonic.

Ironically the JPGs, which will become the end product in the lifecycle of the works, will be the way the works will be largely viewed and remembered. Any nuance or corporeality will be abolished when shifted online, completing the full circle from digital conception to painterly work back to virtuality.