Maddox Arts

Exhibition: 27^th May – 2^nd July 2011

“When freedom is practiced in close circles, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself”

                                                                                                                           -Guy Debord

Maddox Arts is pleased to announce Daniel Medina’s first London solo exhibition. The exhibition features a selection of new artworks and coincides with Maddox Art’s participation at this year’s London PINTA art fair (6^th – 9^th June) where further examples of Medina’s work can be seen.

In Orienteering the artist questions notions of state, society and the self. Through a variety of media Medina explores the paradoxes latent in the 21^st century psyche and examines the role of the artist in a post-globalised, digital-era. A witness to the consequences of globalization in his native Caracas, Medina challenges our dependence on social constructs as a means of self-definition. Through the playful appropriation of cultural ephemera such as maps, birdcages and antique lithographs Medina carves new meaning into familiar objects, reinterpreting the mundane with new depth and shines a light on society’s misgivings.

Medina’s interventionist works utilize a strategy of dissection reminiscent of the geometric exercises of the Op Art movement filtered through his own minimalist, conceptual sensibility. By making physical insertions directly on to the surface of found maps, Medina redraws the boundaries that confine us, subverting notions of sovereignty and nationhood. His maps are intersected with opposing axial strips that filter the ragged contours of the globe into a neatly delineated xy-vector; framing an imperfect world against a vision of its supposed harmony.

The failures of Modernism are symbolized in Medina’s work through the spectre of Arno Goldfinger’s infamous, Trellick Tower. The Modernist attempt to forge communities out of high-rise conurbations and the subsequent cultural hegemony and social dysfunction of inner cities are evidence, to the artist, of the souring democratic ideals of kinship.

The search for new modes of expression have led Medina to develop an artistic language where digital processing and laser-cutting techniques converge with woodcarvings and paper cuttings to reconfigure the perceived chaos of our surroundings into something cohesive and meaningful.