Charlie Alston
ARCHIPELAGO
May 6 – June 24, 2023
The archipelagos of the world are families of islands, within which each island holds a unique identity within their shared context. Their relationship to each other is expansive. In destabilizing categories of near/far and local/global, our ever globalizing humanity has become increasingly decentered and variegated — in Alston’s paintings this mutation and mixing of symbolic language reflects and explores this expansive interrelation.
When a popular image crosses a border, is its meaning absolute? Does it reproduce its original essence or transform? Charlie Alston’s work embodies a hyphen-sign mimetic model prompted by the non-homogenous world that writer, poet, philosopher Édouard Glissant proposes, where each individual is sovereign, yet connected by their relationship to each other. A discourse and poetic of non-negative ‘openness’ for Alston is not something that regulates the Other, as his practice and experience has a phenomenological approach. His practice is in relation to being part of the whole, yet a “part that escapes from the mass continent” and cultivates a nuanced connection with the worlds around him—the Archipelago.
When a popular image crosses a border, is its meaning absolute? Does it reproduce its original essence or transform? Charlie Alston’s work embodies a hyphen-sign mimetic model prompted by the non-homogenous world that writer, poet, philosopher Édouard Glissant proposes, where each individual is sovereign, yet connected by their relationship to each other. A discourse and poetic of non-negative ‘openness’ for Alston is not something that regulates the Other, as his practice and experience has a phenomenological approach. His practice is in relation to being part of the whole, yet a “part that escapes from the mass continent” and cultivates a nuanced connection with the worlds around him—the Archipelago.