NOVEMBER 2023
CENTER GALLERY
Random Chaos, Guilty Pleasures and The Garden of Earthly Delights | Stephen Gray
In my current body of work I have used contemporary and nostalgic toys reconfigured to form strange new creations. Stuffed animals and mechanical toys have been disassembled and rearranged in order to transform them into a new mythology. The cartoonish nature of these materials lends itself to the creation of an imagery that can be both humorous and perverse. Stylistically the work is in the tradition of comic grotesque. The grotesque functions as a metaphor for the incongruous nature of the human condition, comedy says that which is true that you would do anything to deny is true. A subversion of an idyllic vision of nature, the beautiful and the ugly, the humorous and the tragic are inextricably interwoven, creating associations that exude a fascination with a world that explains itself in contradiction.
