Simon Lawler, Juan Grauerholz, Urs Lucas & Abigail Long
[Killing Through Power]
1988
Patterson Museum of art, Zurich, Switzerland

There is maybe a sense of other times in this work, within the present tense transmitted to the screen. The relationship of the fictional world to reality is reflected in the constant preoccupation with the relationship of photography to painting and of either to experience reality, however, there is a sub-text, a slight twist, a sideswipe at conformism, a throwing off-balance both physical and mental. At the same time a biomorphic quality is acquired through partial erasure, bleeding and multiple applications, even if it deals with currently important themes like community, politics or science and technology; the work does result from an awareness of the kinds of activity: collecting, analysing and sharing data, the use of vivid colors, often primary, and of mirror effects playing on light to create the desired atmosphere; that is the transformations and the invented narratives through thousands of repetitive images; without change - significant change via experimentation - contemporary art risks fading into stale predictability. It symbolizes the artist's optimistic belief in beauty and change, the art of Simon Lawler emphasises an awareness of visual elaboration of images. The starting point for Killing Through Power is the corner, 'the boundary between interior and exterior', between indoors and outdoors, between Public and Young.