Diving for Pearls
13 March—2 April
Crafted from and on linoleum, here are works in bitumen and flocking, paint, pollen, paperback bark, beads, pearls, willow charcoal, accents of copper, gold or silver leaf and varnish. Caches such as these intrigue and invite the eye to travel slowly because these are shifting surfaces. Experiences made visible.
Whenever and wherever Ogden travels, he photographs, draws and paints the localities and, subsequently, with myriad remnants, he constructs narratives that aim to make visible his experience of time and place. His use of symbols, abstractions and referents inlaid throughout these works are not simply the product of a mind stoked on imagination. Ogden’s ability to attend to, remember and re-member experience is mosaiced in a rich but disciplined architecture. It is not so much that his media is the message, the materials of memory, but rather that these deeply syncretic substances potentially probe how we remember and re-member. Or not.
