COMBINING MAKE-DO OPPORTUNISM ...
Combining make-do opportunism with highly-developed craft skill, Henry Krokatsis makes sculpture that is at once functional and subversive. Drawing upon the design of pornographers’ darkrooms and ornithologists’ hides, Arctic fishing shacks and the archetypal garden shed, he explores our physical, emotional and intellectual reactions to enclosed architectural space.Krokatsis has overlaid the original concrete floor of the Gallery with an intricate patterned parquet based on the floor design of the Versailles Palace. However, instead of traditional quarter sawn oak, the artist has used discarded materials –rejected off-cuts, abandoned wardrobes and broken kitchen units. These have all been dismantled, painstakingly cut down, shamfered and laid by hand.
The work, at once functional and subversive, references work as diverse as Carl Andre’s minimalist floorworks and the schizophrenic architecture of Karl Junker.
The marriage of ‘make-do’ opportunism and highly developed craft skill is evident also in the two shelters presented. Angelcote is a two-storey octagonal structure, built by the artist as a cipher for Angelic activity. Hut One is a secretive rubber-coated retreat, evocative of more disturbed activity.
Also, on display were a series of drawings made from the carbon deposits of burning rags. These outline seemingly mundane subjects –a woman with her dogs, for example – , which carry an odd and evasive quality.
All of this work, though apparently diverse, starts from a similar position, an act of faith in the seemingly bankrupt – turning it in to the inexplicable, pulling us away from logic and rationality and towards the realm of childhood visions and dreams.