Chris Oatey: Aerial Perspective | Project Room

9 October - 7 November 2020

Overview

Oatey’s practice has been consistently informed by a cartographic sensibility. He produces a wide range of works from the intricately hand drawn to the raw, immediate recording of his everyday surroundings.

The works in Aerial Perspective are the result of disparate yet connected sites of production. For example, Oatey drives over large swaths of paper in parking lots, using the car’s mass to index cracks, potholes and patterns of weathering. Back in the studio, one process informs another, resulting in intersections of texture and randomness that are subtly layered together.

Offering alternating moments of meditative mark making and curious geographical recording, tonal works on paper act as receptacles for observational catalogue. The mundane becomes new again, whether it be through tightly controlled gestures or a collaborative process between asphalt and car tires. In Aerial Perspective, Chris Oatey employs subtle humor, using differing modes to capture the aura of place and

time, physically imprinting the phantasms that haunt the everyday.