BLURRED GIRL SERIES - JONAS RANSON
This Spring we are very excited to share with you a continuation of 'The Blurred Girl' Series by Jonas Ranson. The original duo, 'Blurred Girl I and II' were created over the course of a year in 2020.
For the Blurred Girl series there is a tension created between clear and blurred lines tracing the outline of a female figure’s face, clothing and jewellery. The work references the look and glamour of fashion magazine plates, a vision that hints at a luxurious, escapist world. Hyper-exposed faces emerge from the illustration’s background, and are confined to basic facial features, which can only partially be indicated by makeup and fashion application details.
Several contradictory things are apparent upon viewing these images. They acquire the uncertainty of memory, the imprecision of unenacted fantasy, the unfocusable swirl of the unconscious, of dreams. Colours become nuanced, delicate, or expressionistically garish. The blurred or fuzzy images look forever caught in motion, slightly abstracted. Becoming more about the act of looking than content of the images themselves.
The works seek to merge a number of painterly appearances and techniques. The screen print process used to print the images, though very technical in its application, replicates brush and spray marks and gestures. The soft sprayed look of the art produces a highly aestheticized, nostalgic art language, harnessing the gestural, unpredictable, projectile qualities of spray paint.
Jonas on The Blurred Girl Series
I really enjoy the dichotomy created between the technical process of the image making, and the painterly result in the final print. Original hand drawn and painted sketches are scanned then worked up digitally. These are then printed using the CMYK four colour process. Each colour is applied in a set pattern of tiny dots that appear to create a solid colour. I have worked over many years to perfect and refine this process.
The initial inspiration for the title of Blurred Girl emerged from my love of the track of the same name by pioneering 1980’s electronic artist John Foxx. The atmosphere of ‘A Blurred Girl’, as all tracks on the Metamatic Lp which it is from, is stark and cold, with its robotic rhythms, deep drones and screaming synths. The album was heavily influenced by the writings of J. G. Ballard. From merging with crowds to dreams of leaving, to the blurry imprecision of the senses, are just some of the images that John Foxx's visionary debut throws at you.
What is a blur. It is a corruption of an image, an assault upon its clarity. The blur serves as a perfect general metaphor for memory, its degradation. The blur makes everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they look technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. The blurring can also help make the print surreal, more enigmatic.
Much of the way of working , the detached act of screen printing, in which ink is pushed through a screen in even layers, removes the individual, stylistic traces of the hand. Dragging squeegees across the print surface and ‘blurring’ the ink applied is something that is inherent in the act of physically making every screen print.
John Foxx ‘A Blurred Girl’ Lyrics
I'm taking nothing
It's not my way
It's almost summer now
This bed's been made
Some time ago a figure strolled
Along the esplanade
Changing in the mist and light
Underneath the green arcades
Chorus: A blurred girl A blurred girl Are we running still? Or are we standing still? Are we running still? Or are we standing still? Standing so close Never quite touching Standing so close Never quite touching
(Chorus) Wounded in sleep again The sequences move by me A million miles across the room A tearing sound of smiling We're fixing distances on maps And echo paths in crowds The light from other windows Falls across me now
(1980)
Artwork is available to view in gallery from 27th April 2023, alternatively you can view both Jonas’s new and full collection online here
