Zhivago Duncan

Through his sprawling, messy multimedia artworks, Zhivago Duncan comments on the state of contemporary culture and its obsessions, crassly quoted and re-created from an irreversibly apocalyptic future point of view. The work shown here was part of a recent exhibition entitled ‘Dick Flash’s Souvenirs of Thought’ in which viewers were taken on a journey into the meaning of the senseless remains that might fill a time to come.

The artist explains: ‘Pretentious Crap [2010-2011] is the result of the imaginary journey of Dick Flash, the world’s sole survivor of the apocalypse according to him and his legacy. Semi-amnesiac, Dick Flash roams the converted world digging up the fruitful remains of his debauched ancestors. Without any recollection of his personal past, Dick Flash does, however, experience moments of epiphany, in which abstract notions of the origin of self, a collective memory, and the accumulated trials and tribulations of humanity are vaguely delineated, as revealed to him in prophetic visions.’

This work is one of Dick Flash’s relics from his journey, a cabinet in which former art objects are reinterpreted as mysterious ruins. It’s as if Flash is re-writing the history of culture through his chaotic assemblages, starting from scratch, like an artist, taking on an Übermensch persona.

‘With no memory of his former life, Dick Flash naturally rediscovers his affinity for physics, kinetic energy, and his predisposition for philosophical reflection. By repurposing found scraps of metal and steel, the skeletons of automobiles and locomotives that have somehow withstood civilization’s destruction, and random matter once considered waste that has ironically survived its very creator, Dick Flash fabricates a new iconography, commemorating his interpretation of an extinct empire and its tragically flawed constituents.’