Christopher Nielsen’s ‘Slax Appeal’ examines the detritus that results when comprehension collides with interpretation.
Combining a love of bespoke signage and vintage advertising characters, ‘Slax Appeal’ revels in misunderstandings, low budgets, malapropisms, impenetrable ad lingo and the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi. This body of work deals in the beauty found in the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, celebrating discarded ephemera.
Nielsen’s present work shares ideals with artists from the Lowbrow Movement and Mission School in it’s examination of pop culture, folk and hobo art. Visually, the pieces utilise cut plywood surfaces and hardware store acrylics, looking to the faded do-it-yourself ingenuity of long forgotten sign writers and merchants in the artist’s local environment. Deterioration of the surface via the elements and time plays a large role in Nielsen’s visual vocabulary.
The work also reinterprets the juxtaposition and irrationality of Duchamp and the Dadaists, mixing it with pop art, advertising vernacular and humour. These are forgotten treasures, exhumed from a barn in the Deep South requiring illumination.
