The Ready Jester 2018

Russ Warren created this mixed media artwork with an eruption of colour and form. The dark background makes the array of creatures emerge with force. The composition is structured in four panels, each filled with animalistic figures, masks, and what appears to be a clown or jester. The checkerboard patterns worn by the figures introduce a semiotic play, disrupting traditional symbols of order. Are we looking at a carnivalesque distortion of reality? Warren toys with the viewers' perceptions by destabilizing the composition, creating a pictorial space that refuses a fixed meaning. The animals, skulls, colours and patterns seem to create a challenge to conventional artistic language. In this deconstruction, Warren invites us to question our own interpretative frameworks. The destabilizing effect of the composition reminds us that art is always subject to an endless process of interpretation.