34LONG Fine Art by leading South African and International Contemporary Artists


	Morning Road Stranger (detail) 2005, lambda edition of 9, 150 x 60cm
PRESS RELEASE MASHUPS Print collaboration - Matthew Hindley and Peter Eastman 13 December 2005 19H00 – 14 January 2006 High above the Cape Town CBD, in adjacent studios, two young South African artists are collaborating in a unique and exciting painting project to be showcased at 34 Long Fine Art in December 2005. Although close friends and studio mates, Matthew Hindley and Peter Eastman are not two names one associates together easily. Hindley is known for his multi-media physical computing installations, such as _Speak Naturally and Continuously_ which graces the façade of the South African National Gallery as well as his psychologically challenging but essentially witty and self-depreciating paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints seen in several major exhibitions recently. In contrast Eastman is known for his somewhat serious, frequently minimalist landscapes and quiet painterly studies. Their new collaboration sees Eastman’s landscapes, of road scenes, eerily nighttime sites (a favourite subject), even the view from their studio balcony, having Hindley’s nightmarish Freudian dream worlds interrupting them. The title of the series Mashups evokes the taking of two otherwise unified and complete artistic creations and bringing them together to brilliant new effect. Both Hindley and Eastman have created separate structures that could stand on their own: together they unify into a brilliant new visual language. The product is reminiscent of Japanese neo-Pop artist Takashi Murakami: a dark cartoon world inhabited by corpulent, undulating pink penises and pretty hentai maidens. However in the case of Eastman and Hindley we have a richly textured image, as opposed to Murakami’s “Superflat” conceptions. Working together, the two artists have conjured up a painterly world that deftly massages a rich, rounded iconography on the evocative backgrounds of a truly South African world that could never be captured through a more “realistic” mode. These are psychological renderings of remembered landscapes. The final product, a digital image that will be realized in limited edition Lambda print format, is a highly textured representation that sees two seemingly disparate worlds colliding to tremendously exciting effect. The technique of one artist producing a relatively static and flat-colour dominated background and the other peopling it with intricately worked thematic figures is reminiscent of traditional cell-based animation. This can be no coincidence because the work that the process produces makes conscious reference to the language of cartoons and comics. Eastman and Hindley have embarked on a new path, the terrain of which cuts through both their own and us, the viewer’s nightmares and dreamscapes.
All images © the artist, 2005
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