The Drawers - Johann Feught   Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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Bona Fide

Feught presents a spiritual landscape or a mind map consisting of fractured layers, splintered associations, colourful gels and glimpses of solarized humanoids. The ethereal other-worldliness is structured as a portrait rather than a horizontal layout in order to form the necessary connection with the vertical momentum of mental ascension. The closest comparison from architecture would be the vaulted ceilings with stained glass windows of the Renaissance and yet the environment that Johann Feught creates is not only from the past but also a projection into the future, kaleidoscopic and disorienting. Vague and incomplete memories unite with hopes and aspirations of moments yet to be born. It is like the novel 1984; the time in which it was set is now past and yet it was meant to be a depiction of the future. The year 1984 bore little resemblance to the events or even look of that George Orwell described in his novel, first published in 1949. The novel, however, assumed an even greater significance than the virtual year, frozen as it is within the literary piece, as if to supersede reality. There is a similar resulting overview in Johann Feught's imagery. It has a familiarity that is more real than the disconnected environment that passes as reality. He has exposed the circuit board.. His spatial constructions communicate on various levels. It is an ultra reality, one that draws from undiscovered places and sets them within the perspective of art.

There is a tapestry-like feel to these pieces. The coloration is reminiscent of the silver, gold, natural dies (indigo, cochineal) or the extreme poignancy of the phtalos used in the medieval tapestries. The application upon a stationary warp of the tapestry produced a dimensional shading much like the tinted tones inherent in the etching process. The gradations, color to color, are eerily perfect as if wrought by a more developed technology than we have been introduced to in our dimension.

The figurative elements too, appear to be communicating from another realm. They have a haunted distraction like a visitation during a séance. David Hume has written of perpetual flux as “several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations”. It could be a description of Johann Feught's work, where the woman with her raised pouting lips, the bearded man, or the delicate, bald, ethereal being criss-cross between art pieces and show us glimpses of associations far beyond our ken.

Copyright © 2007,  Julie Oakes