Jonathan Owen’s work, in both two and three dimensions, involves reducing and rethinking existing objects and images. He employs a kind of elegant vandalism to reconstruct and reinvent his ‘material’, transforming something found into something new.
His sculptures begin as relics of another time: 19th Century marble statues that he re-carves into disjointed, re-invigorated versions of their original selves. While delicately examining the essential qualities of what was formerly there, Owen skillfully presents the viewer with a curious and unexpected new form.
Similarly, his “drawings” begin as photographs found in the pages of books. Working very slowly, Owen erases layers of ink, gently removing elements of the original to leave a ghostly trace of what was there before and creating a new narrative within the pre-existing image. Owen was born in Liverpool in 1973 and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art MFA in 2000. He currently lives and works in Edinburgh. His work will be presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in the summer of 2014 as part of the nationwide exhibition GENERATION.
