Meta: 1 a change of position or condition: metamorphosis. 2 position behind, after, or beyond 3 something of a higher or second-order
Figurative: 1 not using words literally; metaphorical. 2 Art representing forms that are recognizably derived from life.
This site is the beginning of an attempt to identify and perhaps help define a style of contemporary visual art that is currently obscured from the main lens of cultural surveillance.
It is intended to start a debate, and not only will any opinions/responses be gratefully received, they will also be added to this page.
Metafigurative art is art that depicts recognisable forms, but that has elements of otherness, for instance, anthropomorphism or metamorphosis.
Through skilled and knowledgeable use of materials, the state of being human is referred to, albeit sometimes obliquely, and the frequent application of both ancient and modern symbols makes for a particularly visceral visual style that leads meaning in a labyrinthine direction, from the darkness of the subconscious, to the UV loom of the critical consciousness.
It shares common ground with Gothic, Street, Fantasy art and Surrealism and much of what is now called Eastern art, but, perhaps more coherently than the former movements, metafigurative art expresses the unique pathology of our time. The pathology of the helpless but striving 21st century soul.
Very broad brushstrokes of background
We live in an age of inexorable digital technology, ecological crisis, genetic engineering, corporate and media power, and, most pertinent for the fine arts; image saturation. Given the fait accompli presented by this unprecedented level of pictorial dominance, the fine arts have understandably sulked their way into a defensive position. Elevating idea over image ensured specialness and a liberal icing of self referential gestures helped stiffen the resolve of this gated community.
However those majority others involved in the image industries have not been immune to the forces that define this new century, and animism, fantasy, and transgenic beings proliferate in advertising, television and gaming.
Overwhelmed by awareness of global events, the individual is targeted by perky and perfidious advertising companies, “its all about you”. Mythic rural landscapes, filled with happy animals are depicted in films and energy company branding.
The dystopias and specialist power of superbeings found in comic books has been animated into fresh existence by computer 3-D imaging, and the genres of fantasy and magical realism are a fecund source of transformative imagining.
Sketching in
From textile dolls that advertise cars, to furry fandom and animated avatars guiding our mouse clicks, there is an abundance of anthropomorphism, the kind of which, (prior to the discovery of DNA), was only to be found in folklore and the pages of children's books.
It seems to be the case that, like the medieval mind, we are responding to a world of unfathomable complexity with symbol and allegory.
This is an aesthetic that is born directly out of the question: 'what is it to be human?', as the rapidity of change makes the definition of our species more and more pressing.
Some artists are starting to share terrain with their commercialy-driven peers, producing visually striking artwork with dedication to materials, (of course others never left this ground). It was this observation that prompted this writing.
Inevitably, any art movement, (or in this case in-utero theory), defines itself in relation to what has gone before, and the characteristics of metafigurative art do contrast with the salient qualities of the idea-based art that has held sway for the last forty years. The main difference is a re-prioritising of aesthetics, a shift in importance that may well stem from the satisfaction of mastering technique - process having been deeply unfashionable for so long the joy of manipulating materials to purpose becomes guilty pleasure.
There have beens signs of a struggle out from under the coffin lid of concept, most recently Nicholas Bourriard's Relational Aesthetics, but this laudable effort still leaves no room for those artists engaged with the practice of using materials to influence content as well as form.
Traditionalist champions of process and its relationship with the representational are implacably opposed to conceptual art and even, in the case of the Stuckists define themselves in sharp contrast to it. However this leads to a picturesque cul-de-sac that was dug-out during the Abstract vs Figurative wars of the last century, as redundant a battle as Concept vs Aesthetics, or indeed any other highly polarised debate.
Instead of sacrificing meaning to beauty, metafigurative art expresses the dark night of the soul. Pregnant with meaning, but of the kind that originates in interior life rather than self-conscious staging, it moves at the corners of our eyes, a shadow cast by our species that has come to life and started behaving autonomously.
A random selection of artists producing work that can be defined as metafigurative, there are many more....
Julie Heffernan Stef Driesen Christopher Orr Christian Rex Van Minnan Arif Ozacka Laurie Lipton Danny Treacy Richard Slatter Kris Kuksi Sally Tiffin Sam Branton Sam Kaprielov Max Streicher
David Harrison Meryl Donoghue Patrick Goddard Diann Bauer Laura Ford Neil Farber Iv Toshain Rachel Goodyear Nathaniel Mellors Jim Gaylord Kristian Burford Martha Madigan Judy Fox
Rhett Podersoo Jon Rappleye Tom Ormond Kirsty Whiten Philippe Perrot Catherine Maffioletti Jonathan Darby Cris Brodahl Mari Sunna Furrymaid Elinor Evans Graham Little Christopher Clack
Maya Hewitt Cos Ahmet Karin Hanssen Phoebe de Gaye Nick Cobb Kate Street Dale Grimshaw Jack Duplock Jaybo Christine Aerfeldt Karen Tang John Simpson Zachary Walsh Wangechi Mutu
Inka Essenhigh Hernan Bas Alex Gertschen Jon Pylypchuk
Metafigurative art has made me think about particular texts that I have been reading of late - which deal with this sense of death (philosophically speaking), with the slip between interior and exterior worlds, as a body, a body which is defined in the between of the interior and exterior of itself... about art made in, figuratively speaking, the eclipsed interiority/exteriority of the body, a darkness which determines the impossibility of separating the inside from the outside (the form from the content). As a body which is subject to experience through these states without the dichotomy of these culturally, religiously, canonised polarisations and tendencies to spatially demarcate, map and ultimately to fragment the body. Rather considering the body holistically along with all that affects and effects it into being, and from this trajectory, Metafigurative art as a being, a body might also become other things, machines, nature, matter – perhaps through hybridity, transformation, metamorphosis, mimesis, mimicry. With our inability to separate our experience of the world from the sensible body - whether Metafigurative art is the work of embodied gestures? - Catherine Maffioletti
You are quite right of course that the conceptual-Stuckist debate goes nowhere, and you are grasping for the big prize, a definition of what comes after the postmodern—one that Bourriaud went for and failed to get with Altermodern. I think you are also right that definitions of the human, and its manipulability, will be a central of much art to come; but in among that rethinking of the human will surely be a rethinking of aesthetics itself, and I wonder whether gothic or surreal elements, human imaginings of Poe-like shadows at the edge of consciousness and so on, may come to seem rather quaint and old-fashioned. But that’s just a speculation, of course. - Anon
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