Oliver Clegg
Temporality and fragility of existence are the major themes that persist in Oliver Clegg’s multidisciplinary art practice. He is best known for paintings of discarded childhood toys rendered in dramatic chiaroscuro. These works contain a double layer of nostalgia since the artist paints these images on found drawing boards and church pews, building upon their doodles and markings. "The nostalgic nature of both the surfaces and the subjects are mechanisms for inspiring the viewer to consider his position in the present day with fictitious reconstructions of the past," says Clegg.
Extending his take on the momento mori beyond painting, Clegg has installed several signs in nature that read “The End.” For instance, The End (2013) is a digital C-print that documents the burning of a 20-foot wooden sculpture that the artist assembled above a lake in the Catskills. Spelling out the words “The End,” the piece burnt so that the letters fell one by one into the water in an expression of quiet inevibility. Clegg has also created playful sign works in neon–one of the same phrase spelled in cartoon fonts and erected beside a lake, and one that lights up the hashtag “#IWASTHERE” in a desert.
Clegg’s work has been …
Temporality and fragility of existence are the major themes that persist in Oliver Clegg’s multidisciplinary art practice. He is best known for paintings of discarded childhood toys rendered in dramatic chiaroscuro. These works contain a double layer of nostalgia since the artist paints these images on found drawing boards and church pews, building upon their doodles and markings. "The nostalgic nature of both the surfaces and the subjects are mechanisms for inspiring the viewer to consider his position in the present day with fictitious reconstructions of the past," says Clegg.
Extending his take on the momento mori beyond painting, Clegg has installed several signs in nature that read “The End.” For instance, The End (2013) is a digital C-print that documents the burning of a 20-foot wooden sculpture that the artist assembled above a lake in the Catskills. Spelling out the words “The End,” the piece burnt so that the letters fell one by one into the water in an expression of quiet inevibility. Clegg has also created playful sign works in neon–one of the same phrase spelled in cartoon fonts and erected beside a lake, and one that lights up the hashtag “#IWASTHERE” in a desert.
Clegg’s work has been shown in London at the Freud Museum in London, Saatchi Gallery, and Royal Academy of Arts, as well as internationally at Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, the Modem Museum in Hungary, and Reykjavik Museum of Modern Art.
