Justin Lowe

 

Blaze #1 (estimated prophet)

porcelain ceramic, glaze, wood, adhesive, grout, 36” x 31”, 2021

Blaze #1 (estimated prophet) is the first in an ongoing series of art
works being made in Woodstock over the last year that explore
apophenia, transmogrification and technicolor language.
The form is lifted from a vintage poetry book cover illustration and
while the gestural abstract shape is not technically a Rorschach it
does trigger a generative free associative albeit inconclusive thought
process that neither arrives at a fixed name nor representation. The
motif is an intentionally crafty ceramic and glaze based rendition of
the neon orange tree based cameo known as Blaze. With its retinally
charged fluorescent, high-terror alert orange sky juxtaposed with the
icy silk-screened industrial portrait of trees, Blaze is curiously popular
with both fashion forward street wear brands like Supreme and Vans
as well as the more militia-minded red pill set.

The function of the day glo orange is to alert hunters of other
hunters’ presence all the while concealing the hunter from the hunted.
However, this is no marmalade sky, no tangerine dream but the same
sky we see on tv screens and newspapers—the sky of a at one time
speculative dystopian science fiction’s depiction of our own world that
has come to absolute fruition; this is the west coast on fire, this is the
sky enshrouding Phillip K Dicks Tyrell Corporation. Also, it doesn’t
take a log lady to tell you that the trees are also not what they seem.
You can get lost in these woods and look for signs. At times the
spaces between leaves, limbs and sky shatter Euclidean perspective
and seemingly a message begins to simultaneously appear and then
recede like a cheshire cat. This is when you have to trust the markers
on the trail, markers that just happen to be called blazes.

 

Justin Lowe (b.1976) Dayton ,Ohio
Lives and works in NYC and Woodstock, NY

​

​