Yuri Pattison

 of the Japanese earthquake in 2011, a series of shots taken by Pattison at the derelict site of the 2004 Athens Olympics, recordings of holographic cigarette adverts and a simulated tour around an art gallery. His subjects pit the functionality of technology against their aesthetic.

Pattison’s display methods elevate the impermanence of the digital file alongside the permanence of traditional artistic media. He says, “this mirrors my interest in how the internet has collapsed time: that while everything is changing at an amazing pace, the recent past is also as present as ever.” A semblance of permanence follows: for example, in the ever-presence of current affairs or in the inextinguishable traces of our activities on social networks. As a result, dystopic themes recur as an increasingly accessible past haunts the increasingly disposable now.

The dystopic element is countered by the creative opportunities afforded by a key facilitator of this haunting, accessibility: A virtual tour around a museum of contemporary art is hijacked by the artist and the backlit prints that are scattered on the end wall of the gallery – displayed as if resized, dragged and dropped on a computer screen – are whimsical images drawing on connectivity and construction. Further to this, Pattison’s website focal-plane.org, an ongoing projects, is a labyrinth of images and links charting his own observations, on travels and excursions, found imagery from related research, as well as documentations of artworks and collaborations. The portrait is of an artist intimately connected with a diverse series of networks and with an eye fascinated by the often extraordinary forms that ground this connectivity in the physical environment. The gallery itself, painted in an unconventional, neutral colour and with the vitrine packing cases left in situ, subverts the conventions of a white cube gallery and further focusses attention on the physical manifestations of Pattison’s content.”

text via Son Gallery‘s Facebook