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Paul Eachus, Provisional Events, Foreseen Errors, 2006, C-type print mounted on aluminium,
125 x 171cm
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Paul Eachus, Rehearsals, 20064 C-type print mounted on aluminium,
125 x 180 cm
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Paul Eachus, Tremor, 2006, C-type print Diasec mounted,
190 x 166 cm
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Janek Schaefer, Ectstatic Entropy, Sound Installation , the Agency, 2014
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Janek Schaefer, Ectstatic Entropy, Sound Installation , the Agency, 2014
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“Timings” , Paul Eachus, Gallery 1
"Ecstatic Entropy”, Janek Schaefer, Gallery2
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Paul Eachus’ work evolved from painting in the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties via a decade long successful collaboration with John Goto to the independent photographic pieces he shows internationally since 2000.
For this exhibition a selection of Eachus’ works from the last fifteen years attest to their currency. The large-scale diasec prints are clearly influenced by a painterly as much as a political discourse. He creates dystopian environments physically over a long time, from collecting and collating mundane materials, physically balancing them in the studio space and finally documenting them with the camera. Incongruously the highly tuned final work pays homage to anti-order. Eachus’ selections of textural chaos surprisingly align within the pictorial space. On the luscious surface of immersive scale diasec mounted photographs, the mise-en-scene of the artist’s studio/ mind/ archive becomes a quasi painting, where non-structures come to form patterns with the aid of accidental colour-fields. Eachus does not deny arranging the props, on the contrary his chaos structures are a conscious intervention to escape the order of the trained eye. For all their performativity and consideration they remain essentially sets for a pictorial discourse, temporal and transient.
In a secondary but equally important reading the chaos structures created for the photographs take on a social and architectural dimension. This is corroborated by the presence of sculptural and installation pieces in his practice such as Trans Chaosmos Facility. The sculptural works can be read as an ‘overspill’ from the two-dimensional surface. Chaos structures are part of a rapid expansion of cities, often associated with shantytowns and makeshift housing for the disadvantaged parts of society. Outside of any city planning temporary structures create shelter and subordinate economies, whilst remaining organic and impermanent. They are essential and precarious both in an architectural sense but also in a political sense. Eachus’ works astutely attests to social dystopia in a global context, while retaining a sense of controlled detachment through a residual painterly discourse.
It would be timely to re-discover Paul Eachus’ work and not only highlight its currency and relevance today but also attest to its depth and density acquired over a long and rich practice since the late Seventies.
‘Ecstatic Entropy’ by sound artist Janek Schaefer is his second solo exhibition at the Agency. A room installation will combine a floor and a wall piece, both incorporating boomboxes with remote FM transmitters. Schaefer frequently uses the motif of a circle as a formal device referencing both vinyl media and the popular culture of the dance floor. Circles also enable the dissemination of sound in the gallery space through speakers and resulting acoustic ripples. Schaefer’s work invites the audience to immerse themselves. The sonic waves he transmits from device to device bring fluidity to the work, which is echoed in his use of reflective surfaces- vinyl fragments, glitter and chrome. Schaefer has been described as ‘mastering the art of sound collage and being an avant-garde "turntablist"’ (Piero Scaruffi). His compositions work with clusters of foundsound recordings and morphing spaces and his installations and assemblages increasingly reflect the minimalism and immersive quality of his music. ‘Ecstatic Entropy’ examines our ephemeral nature. Broadcast on classic hi-fi equipment the composition invites us to enjoy the endorphins and transcendence of sounds, while beautifully deconstructing them so they appear like distant fragments of a forgotten archive.
Janek Schafer who received the Paul Hamlyn Award for composers and the British Composer of the Year Aaward, both in 2008, has also been chairman of the jury for British Composer of the Year 2013 and 14. He is Visiting Professor & Research Fellow, Oxford Brookes - Sonic Art Research Unit. In 2015 he will realise a new music commission for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in collaboration with William Basinski.
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