Marion Scharmann

Pat Flynn

08 - 15 Nov 2013

© Pat Flynn
Cold Children (6), 2012
Lambda print behind plexiglas
25 x 25 cm
edition of 5 + 1
PAT FLYNN
Cold Children
8 – 15 November 2013

Built around a new body of work, Pat Flynn’s exhibition »Cold Children« is a photographic installation that uses the repeated motif of an empty photo-frame as its subject. Constructed using computer generated imagery (CGI); these recurrent yet in each case remodelled versions of the object provide, on the surface, an elegant and poignant vehicle for the content under consideration; whilst closer inspection of the image reveals an on-going formal interest for the artist. At first glance with its white walls and overhead lights, the mirror-like surface of the work appears to be replicating and feeding back to the viewer an echo of the gallery space in which they are located; yet this is a fictitious space; a constructed reflection fabricated to form part of the composition of the image as a whole.
Chosen by the artist, the title »Cold Children«, makes reference to conditioned behaviour in response to the expanded and pervasive influence of television.

In his predominantly digitally produced work that covers photography, film and installation, Flynn examines the language of the mass produced. Drawing on ideologies, processes, themes and sentiments found in Hollywood films, computer games, consumer goods and advertising, he presents fictionalised worlds full of cliché and pathos.

The film »Other fatherland« is a digitally generated animation depicting a comic scene about isolated evolutions, which takes it’s title directly from the evolutionary term for this.
It is meant to be an absurd comedy about a fecundic power relationship.
The signifiers in the work are meant to have multiple meanings. e.g. The blown smoke at once could be read as an act of insult or fertilization.

Article in »The Guardian«:

Pat Flynn »Cold Children«

Pat Flynn’s meticulously executed and immaculately framed digital prints are deceptively simple. Collectively titled Cold Children, these are apparently photographs of empty frames. The fact Cold Children is a psychiatric term for children who display »callous and unemotional« traits gives a hint of the underlying unease of Flynn’s make-believe minimalism. Here’s an artist who has consistently focused on one of the most significant problems of our time: how does the increasing exposure to film, TV and computer screens, especially among the young, affect our perception of life? Flynn concentrates on the profoundly hypnotic mystery of the screen as an interface between the individual psyche and the global mass of media communications.

RC, The Guardian
 

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