Alasdair Duncan “Things to do with what we don’t know”

Theodore:Art

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Theodore:Art presents Alasdair Duncan - Things to do with what we don’t know.

Alasdair Duncan has been making art with what he doesn’t know. Or is it art about what he doesn’t know? How does one talk about what it is that one doesn’t know? It’s a problem in so far as words in their signifying effect are not entirely adequate to this task - at best they convert a little of the unknown into something known, but then it becomes something else, something known, the unknown as such is gone. One might try to make signs of some sort as stand-ins for whatever it might be that isn’t known. And this has been the approach that Duncan has sought for some years.

Duncan pushes formal and associative equivocation in his art as a way of trying to get at what’s not known without making it something known. It’s the method of a here and a there, where when you look here it must be there, and vice versa, so that the unknown is figured in terms of a neither here nor there - a kind of something where there should just be an absence.

Alasdair Duncan’s third solo show at Theodore:Art presents a new series of artworks, including posters or dibond panels, some with photographs printed onto them, and painted or not in sign-maker’s enamel, and a new installation.

Duncan’s work uses a limited vocabulary of elements in a way to play with unstable alternacies. He employs a range of references from those of the formal equivocations of an artwork, to a looser play of found references to the world, often with a psycho-sexual undertone. Is a black circle on a photographic image part of the picture plane? a cut, or hole, a deficit? an addition, a surplus? A stain? If the circle is within the print, how is it different than for a circle of glossy oil on the surface? Is the circle in the same register as the image, part of the image? If so what does it do in the image-world? If not then what? Might a pair of circles read psycho-sexually, and if so, is it in one way, or another? What is one for the other? And the other for the one?

Alasdair Duncan’s art has been shown internationally, including in the UK, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and the United States. As well as working as an artist Duncan works as a psychoanalyst, and writes about art, and about psychoanalysis, and about art and psychoanalysis. Duncan is a graduate of the Royal Academy School Post Graduate program, and received a BA from Goldsmiths College. Duncan lives and works in London. He is represented by Theodore:Art, Brooklyn.