Superstructure

Jonathan Allen's collages and paintings combine pop imagery, abstraction, and propaganda to reflect the contradictions that arise from within our cultural and political climate. The various media he uses oil/acrylic, pen and ink, pencil, and newspaper and magazine cuttings sometimes coalesce in formal harmony, though more often they serve to diagram the breakdowns triggered by irreconcilable clashes in perspective. If culture is a language of forces operating in mixed agreement--desire, ethics, history, money, power--then the unlikely fusions in Allen's work represent a resonant voice in the conversation of who we are now. That Allen achieves this without sacrificing either aesthetic pleasure or contextual intelligibility is a credit to his resourcefulness and care, allowing for a dense and eccentric vision that lays bare our culture's often jagged and convoluted messages.