myvanwy gibson - EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION

EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION 2016

This installation of plexiglass paintings was developed via my practice and research while formally studying painting. Via my experiments in painting I stumbled on the concept of the unity of opposites. I was trying to find a way to paint after I had worked with light for so long and it was proving difficult - until I started to paint on plexiglass. This support gave me a better aesthetic result but more importantly got me thinking. The aesthetic for me can be a gate - an intriguing and seductive aspect of art via which the rich garden of the conceptual and philosophical can be entered.

I started to see that one side of the painting was a mirrored version of the other - one only needed to rotate the piece to see its opposite. This may be an obvious conclusion, but as an idea it really intrigued me and upon further research I was opened to the world of dialectics which, via its possibilities for expansion beyond contradictions and as a medium for change, I answered a question I didn’t actually know I was asking, coming to the conclusion that 'Revolution does Not Create Evolution - for a true Evolution to take place a sublation of opposites is required'. This research led me to write the thesis titled ‘The Tautology of Virtual Reality’ and to create the installation of plexiglass paintings 'Evolution not revolution'.