BIG WEIRDO
2019 | Solo show by Chris denovan
99 Loop Gallery | 27th March, 6pm - 26th April 2019
Seemingly calling of a staged chaos, elements detonate outward from its centre, until reaching an a point of suspension. At the apex, the fragments hover.
Revealing a fascination with comic books and the anti-hero, Chris Denovan’s sixth solo show, self-reflexively titled, Big Weirdo, exhibits a space in which the excessive and the impossible are held together through montage and paint. Iterating processes of transfiguration and translation, Denovan’s sitters and internet subjects become, perhaps, not quite themselves; a persona, each performing within a larger, non-prescriptive narrative. Violent gestures shift to the carnivalesque and comic. A painting which begins as a depiction of a man with an elaborate whip resembles and eventually becomes, “The Whipping Tree” (an interesting journey for a still-life).
Oscillating between themes of sexuality, identity and belonging, Denovan employs colour and gesture to subliminally subvert recognisable symbols of heteronormative masculinity and authority. Possibly these mercurial, shape-shifting characters are extensions of the artist himself; portraits like mirrors held back to the one who looks out.