Infinity Bag is the alter-ego and dreamworld of Zachary Jordan Penney. It’s suitably suggestive of his work, which is a satirical pastiche of cultural icons drawn from the endless bag of human history. While his first exhibition 81 Pics embraced the egalitarian tools of pen and A4 copy paper, the High Seas exhibition moves to bigger canvases that investigate repetition, colour and symbol in much more detail. Where the surrealists famously found their fix in a chance meeting on a dissecting-table of an umbrella and a sewing-machine, Penney gets his in the firmly purposeful meeting of Timothy McVeigh and a bicycle on enlarged sheet of postal stamps. His images invite the viewer to solve puzzles; using his symbols to echo mysticism and the worship of esotericism. But unlike many doing the same, Penney really does suggest answers, and in doing so he becomes more a storyteller than an obfuscator. Many of the works draw from conspiracy theories and re-arrange historical events to fit within his homemade mysteries, which emphasises the subjective otherworldliness of common resource pool that artists draw from. What results is a willfully hyperbolic portrayal of fact versus fiction and truth versus enlightenment.
Some previews:
london zion
king kong koresh
turquoise shell suit
OPENING FRIDAY OCTOBER THE 8TH
HIGH SEAS
Ground Floor, Theta Building, 12 Beresford Square, Auckland
FREE BEER
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