HOWARD PUGH
The patterns of erosion and decay that occur when nature taketh back what she hath given us is where Howard Pugh finds his expression. As is so with most aleatoric visions chance plays a key role, but the subject of this artists work is found where man made structures are reclaimed by the elements. A section of oxidized or weather-worn steel wall; semi-regular cracking patterns in sun-baked paint that seem to scale-down like fractals where the coating thins; details of abrasion patterns or dendrites forming in the fissures of a shattered pane. Pugh seems to mock his own species for trying to create things of permanence out of matter with no such intention. And his photographs suggest the tension and struggle between our desire to control our environment and natures insistence on returning it to it’s original state—the disorder that prevails after the dust settles and all is at rest.
As all things human-fashioned are invariably undone or unbecome in their journey back to the primordial, a subtle cosmological intent gets revealed. There is a great underlying mystery in the return pull to the primordial, not perhaps an actual intelligence, but a force that expresses itself in the very style in which all that's artificial must flow back into the sea of the pre-organized; a tide receding, a tide reconvening. Far from random occurrences of rust, of peeling paint, fading and degradation, the great mystery of the return to the primordial is a process of communication, of dialogue; the etchings of decay - its very handwriting. There is remarkable order here, albeit not the order of our world, or order in the realm of abstract understanding, but also not an order subjugated to the superficial tyranny known as chaos either. Even nihilistic ideology as a human creation, eventually withers and is crushed by the ever-fixed pull of the great mystery to the primordial.
http://www.primordialvisions.com
LAST DANCE
CAVE PLANET CONFESSIONS
DIAMOND COUNTRY
CATHEDRAL OF LIES
RED WHITE AND GREY
ROSETTA STONE
PRACTICE VS THEORY
ASCENSION
THE DECISION
UNTITLED
Mother Road
The Lonely Highway
Opinions of the Dead and the Distant Sea
Artifacts from a Reoccurring Dream
After the Monsoon