‘Please Shoes Off At The Front Door’, is a new body of work by Gabriel Cole that explores social norms, hierarchies and elements of home life.
Cole uses the trajectory of household sayings as the basis of a conversation surrounding the symbolism of mundane objects. These initial marks and expressions are then pushed around and manipulated through stacking and buffing gestures, as to communicate the natural abstractions of objects as they find themselves within the identity of a household.
Cole’s use of sculpture represents a way of recapitulating these concepts in physical space. The identity of the home and its objects is teased at through three-dimensional lines of abstraction in clay. The directional composition of objects is envisioned then manipulated, but details that nod to these antique forms carry a vision of the object’s previous life. Cole seeks to oppress the distinction between the two to point towards a new, liminal social identity. Not functional articles of the interior or works of design, but new organic forms of a natural abstraction composed of layers.
Circular forms in Cole’s new body of work explore the recursive nature of domestic structure, a rivet that connects these symbols to create a new foundation.
Shoes off at the front door, leave no trace
intimacies and recollections of the home
domestic love saga
simmering through the ages,
the chopping block, the revelation of a decision
inside voices only, the tolerance of silence, or to say less
turning off the taps, excavating the drips
Please Knock on Closed Doors Before Entering (knock before you enter) tapping at the door
if you use it clean it, cleaning the abyss, the dishes
A Slice Of Life
Crumbs On The Kitchen Floor
Suburban Life Network
Gabriel Cole’s practice explores two-dimensional forms with pertinence to semiotics and motifs. The inclusion of signage as a visual form is a unique expression of a visual, physical, and emotional graphic entity. As Cole conjures three-dimensional forms, the technique of layering is introduced. Materials in the background have been folded, scrunched, and torn to allow for a natural abstraction to occur. However, the foreground portrays a highly considered and delicate painterly hand. It is the intersection of refined skill through practice with a desire for embracing imperfections which imbue Cole’s work with an alluring sense of natural abstraction and unknowing. As to play an ode to the identity of graphic work but with the intention to dissolute, in which now the subject has lost its original intention. Coles's practice focuses these ideas through paintings, sculpture and sound in a way of communicating and manipulating his unique take on spatial forms.
This is Gabriel Cole's first solo show with China Heights, and third time exhibiting with the gallery.