Exhibitions > High Voltage

JGM Gallery, London, 2017
High Voltage

In High Voltage the process of ‘abstraction’ acts as an intertextual springboard for other sub-cultural positions. The exhibition challenges our prevailing sense of genre and cultural hierarchy in Contemporary art.

Bolivar’s work reconfigures paintings from the history of modernism – principally works Malevich, Mondrian and Van Doesburg – by fusing them with elements rock-music iconography. The exhibition’s title, High Voltage, refers to the first album of Australian rock band AC/DC, which was released globally in 1976. With anthems like It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll), and T.N.T, the album not only denotes the start of the Australian band’s success but it also signifies a socio-cultural turn. In a broader cultural context High Voltage reciprocates the attitude of a society that was starting to confront many of the prevailing hierarchies which had underwritten the models of the Enlightenment and Modernity. By symbolically fusing the AC/DC’s epoch defining album to paintings that are emblematic of modernism Bolivar has amalgamated diverse cultural contexts to create a fresh challenge to today’s interpretation of Contemporary painting.

In High Voltage modernist paintings become conceptual ready-mades into which new cultural narratives are interwoven. Logos such as ‘Marshall’, ‘Gibson’ and ‘Fender’ are coyly employed akin to the conceptual artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (who adds foreign elements to historical paintings such as comical red noses). In Bolivar’s work Mondrian's grids are transformed into a Fender amp. The Suprematist archetype of Malevich's black square is multiplied to become a wall of Marshall speakers. Other works such as Ivan Kliun's 'Composition' (1917) and Malevich's ‘Yellow Plane in Dissolution’ (1917-18) are emblazoned with the Gibson logo in lieu of a signature - branding becomes a nom de plume. In this process of inculcation the complex hierarchies and localities of meaning which irrevocably saturate both Modernism and AC/DC conspire to produce a reinvigorated cultural topography.

Ultimately High Voltage forefronts Juan Bolivar’s interest in the inherently self-contradicting and absurd ways that language can operate in the 21st Century. In so doing High Voltage investigates how the 'inter' or 'hypertextual' act as the defining cultural vectors of our age.

2017
2017
She's Got Balls (after Malevich 1917-1918)
Acrylic on Canvas
106 x 71 cm
2017
She's Got Balls (after Kliun 1917)
Acrylic on Canvas
88 x 69 cm
2017
The Rainbow Bar (after Malevich 1932)
Acrylic on Canvas
61 x 49 cm
2017
T.N.T (after Mondrian 1917)
Acrylic on Canvas
48 x 61 cm
2017
Can I Sit Next to You (after Malevich 1930-31)
Acrylic on Canvas
142 x 164 cm
2016
T.N.T (after van Doesburg 1924)
Acrylic on Canvas
50 x 50 cm
2017
High Voltage (A Side) (after Malevich 1915)
Acrylic on Canvas
160 x 240 cm
2017
Rock n' Roll Singer
Acrylic on Canvas
58 x 49 cm
2017
Little Lover (after van Doesburg 1927)
Acrylic on Canvas
30 x 30 cm
2017
The Jack (after Malevich 1928-29)
Acrylic on Canvas
73 x 52 cm
2017
High Voltage (B Side) (after Malevich 1915)
Acrylic on Canvas
160 x 80 cm
2017
Live Wire (after Mondrian 1919)
Acrylic on Canvas
86 x 106 cm
2017
Little Lover (after Malevich 1914)
Acrylic on Canvas
24 x 71 cm
2017
High Voltage (Black) Collectors Edition 1/1
Acrylic on Paper
50 x 50 cm
2017