ADA GALLERY Contemporary Fine Art Gallery

JOSEPH BURWELL

Joseph Burwell, 4th and 5th Intermediate Lords, acrylic paint on laser engraved wood panels, 10h x 14w inches, 2019.

"My work uses material explorations to fracture and reconfigure existing narratives into new unauthorized forms of storytelling. The human instinct for storytelling is the driving force in my work. Our cognitive functions instinctively create narratives from all information, no matter how oblique. Misinterpretation and information loss are important generators of meaning.

Rocks were our first technology. They could be considered the forbidden fruit because they initiated a trajectory of human knowledge. They reside in and below the dermal layer of the earth that is the ultimate stage of all materials. They dwell in this underworld alongside other chthonic beasts such as bacteria and serpents.

In storytelling, matter is neither created nor destroyed. It is only infinitely reorganized.