Alex Bunn

Artist’s Statement

I create large-scale macro-photographs of purpose-built assemblages, sculptures and tableaux. The objects depicted—though arduously crafted—do not persist after being photographed. Instead, I deploy a unique, specially-designed rig to capture the subject at infinite depth of field and microscopic detail.

“Art seeks universals through detailed examination of particulars.” —Prof. Lee Smolin.

I am broadly fascinated with the disparate—and often irreconcilable—systems employed in thought, learning and communication. This fascination branches into formal systems such as taxonomy, scientific method and language, but also into more arcane systems such as personal interpretation or instinct.

My work reconfigures essentials of sculpture, photography and cognitive mapping to deliver superstates, where matter can appear simultaneously inert yet reactive, or continual yet granular in structure. The experience subverts presupposed relationships between material and object, singularity and plurality, dissonance and harmony, or even cause and effect.

“A system is simply the subordination of an aspect of the universe to that aspect of the universe.” —Jorge Luis Borges.

The work asks the viewer to cogitate: what is the nature of the objects captured? Yet simple definitions are elusive. We see that the artworks harbour ostensibly singular objects, but they appear to embody multiple histories or generations that undermine a linear description. I guide events to generate vestiges of change that—though they are static as photographs—flux richly with history, potential, properties and a dissonant multitude of identities.

Alex Bunn lives and works in London and Oslo. His work has been exhibited at the Frieze Art Fair, The Royal Institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery, Scotland as well as in solo and group shows internationally. He will stage his first institutional solo show at Trafo Kunsthall, Oslo in 2016.
This entry was posted in Visual Art and tagged , , by Posit Editor. Bookmark the permalink.

About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.