Found Objects is pleased to present Self-same, a show of recent works on paper by Denver-based artist Dylan Griffith and New York-based artist James Kerley.

The title of the show refers to the way both artists seem to grapple with defining the boundaries of the self; their work inhabits a place between interior mental life and the demands placed on it by the external world, which take the form of ideas, images, and sensations confronting the self, producing new feelings and new needs. Put in Freudian terms, the work is like a screen where both projection and introjection play out—an image of the ego as the coincidence of a solipsistic conception of self (pure subject) with the self as it appears in the world to others (pure object). Or, more simply, both Griffith and Kerley are concerned with showing how slippery the self can be, how it flashes with clarity before becoming obscure.

In Dylan Griffith’s work there is a kind of gratuitous symbolism that trawls for connections between the disparate images, shapes, phrases, and figures that repeatedly appear throughout his collages, which seem to mirror a bedroom or studio wall in the way that Griffith arranges and layers multiple drawings—around, below, and on top of each other—to create a constellation of intuitively related symbols. Despite the looseness of this approach, Griffith’s collages are not formless but aim instead at uncovering the unconscious structures of intuition that guide the ‘mindless’ hand of the artist as he doodles distractedly. The manic energy they exhibit is thus perhaps a cover for a sense of confusion, an image of the real incoherence of contemporary life, where the ability of art to order the chaos reaches a functional limit.

The walnut ink drawings on view by James Kerley are a part of a daily practice; upon entering the studio, he immediately begins drawing as a way of preparing for the work ahead, finding a theme in graphite to expand and improvise on in ink. Almost all self-portraits, they use a grid of comic strip panels, each closely cropped to contain only the head of the artist, to capture the sequence of various gestures, some sentimental, others ironic, and still others somber—contemplative. In a few drawings, the only gesture portrayed is one of looking around, but the way the grid structures the action creates a situation where the figures in each panel become aware of the others as they survey the confines of their square and its position on the grid. More than comics, these drawings resemble an imaginary apartment building where each resident is a version of every other. As much movement as they contain, there is an overwhelming sense of stasis that pervades the drawings; they result in a kind of monolith, collapsing space and time. And yet the eternal recurrence of the same means it is not really the same. In the space between the panels (and the time between days)—like the cuts of a montage—something other takes place: for a moment, the self disappears.

Dylan Griffith is an artist living and working in Denver, CO. He has exhibited at Dateline, and the Arvada Center, with solo exhibitions at Lane Meyer Projects, Alto, and Meow Wolf's Gallery Galleri. He graduated with a BFA in Illustration and was featured in Friend of the Artist Volume 16.  His favorite color is a very specific shade of red and he enjoys wandering aimlessly around Denver.

James Kerley is an artist living and working in NYC. He graduated with a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited in group shows in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.