Trouble 2016

Curator: Okay, let's have a look at Jason Limon’s "Trouble" from 2016. I’m getting a sense of fairytale, with this oddball construction walking around, how about you? Editor: I’m immediately struck by the overt references to industrial materials and processes – it resembles a shipping crate repurposed into some unsettling, mobile contraption. And of course, the reptilian means of locomotion adds to that discordant visual information. Curator: Exactly! It's this peculiar hybrid of charming and menacing. See that goofy little skeleton riding on top waving flags, against this… box creature with literal snakes for feet? It’s so whimsical and sinister at once. Like a dark circus parade. What kind of anxieties do you reckon Jason is tapping into? Editor: I read it as a comment on consumer culture. Limon has carefully crafted this sense of manufactured danger, utilizing iconography and a colour palette which evokes packaging aesthetics – alluding to mass produced goods. The skull-and-crossbones motif, coupled with "Caution," seems ironic. Curator: Hmmm. The surface looks like layered paper ephemera. Like collaged stamps or vintage labels – with an old postage-stamp decorative border. So it's constructed and layered, adding texture but perhaps mimicking manufactured elements. The surface decoration is very precise. Editor: The tension between fine art and the modes of mass production, even mundane objects – where does Limon sit? It’s a painting that’s simultaneously drawing us in and pushing us away. How can one appreciate these formal qualities as the medium being just acrylic and mixed media on panel? How much process goes into it? Curator: The medium being acrylic is quite clever. What does painting as craft or production actually tell us about that anxiety we are sensing? Perhaps it is less "readymade" Duchamp, and more purposefully assembled for that specific expression of surreal menace, the tension is intentionally human and skillful. It transcends anxiety and enters imagination. It is beautiful craft and idea elevated beyond commercial. Editor: Interesting – I appreciate the sense of unease that the collision of industrial and organic elements evokes. It is something to see these materials, as painting, in person. Thanks for the insights! Curator: My pleasure. Art is, after all, about triggering dialogues! It makes the invisible, visible, if you will.