BARNABY BARFORD
TRUTHLIESFEARLOVE
17 June - 23 December 2020
David Gill presents TRUTHLIESFEARLOVE, an online exhibition of Barnaby Barford’s latest body of work.
Encompassing ten unique works on paper, TRUTHLIESFEARLOVE is the outcome of the artist’s further exploration of his word drawings, Barford’s signature technique consists of repeating the same words over and over, allowing his practise to develop both on a formal and conceptual level.
These works on paper highlight the prevalence of contemporary debates on the evolving notion of concepts such as “truth” and “lie” in an era characterised by technology and connectivity. Reflecting on recent historical and political events, Barford’s latest works are testimony to a changing world in which everything is susceptible to being questioned, an oscillation between the power of love and the limits of fear. Barford explains that “lies perpetuate the myth of ‘Them vs Us’. Only Love can heal this divide, a love of each other, an empathy, a willingness to listen, to understand. A realisation that there is no them and us, only us.”
Reflecting on TRUTHLIESFEARLOVE, Alard von Rohr-Demmin writes that “we are faced with an impenetrable thicket, where the word LOVE, traced innumerable times across the paper, directs our gaze in sinuous arabesques into the grey mists that are building up beyond. Unresolved remains the question whether LOVE is absorbed by FEAR or manages to preserve its autonomy and integrity.” The works in the exhibition allude to the idea that the messages Barford explores have been “scrambled by layers of half-truths, spin and misinformation”, and that there “seems to be a haunting portent of the viral onslaught - biological or media-generated, fake or real - that the contemporary global citizen has to negotiate on a daily basis,” says Alard von Rohr-Demmin
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