Jason Kearney. Untoward, 2015; digital collage; 9.8 x 11.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The Dublin-based Kearney also works as a carpenter, and collage initially provided a creative release during his formal education in photography. In contrast with the technical limitations of working with a camera, Kearney found that collage offers a less restrained realm of artistic practice; the challenge in collage comes in the infinite number of possible configurations of the subjects. “You have to wait for the image to come to you,” Kearney says, “and usually that involves sifting through dozens and dozens of images.” Kearney has a collection of 200 National Geographic magazines dating from 1988 to 2008 that he uses as his main source material. The older editions of National Geographic have been especially popular in recent years, perhaps due to a nostalgia for the pre-internet aesthetic of unsaturated imagery and subdued tonality. This probably explains the sense of wistfulness that characterizes much of collage work today; collaging, as Kearney describes it, is a “form of escapism” or an attempt to create vignettes for a realm of fantasy that does not otherwise exist.

Jason Kearney. Assemblage, 2015; digital collage; 11.8 x 11.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Collaging is also a form of collecting, of accumulating an extensive archive of images from which a wide range of compositions become possible. For Kearney, the act of collecting extends beyond the visual to include the textual, and in this case Beard’s list of words. The textual component of the 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language acts as a parameter that defines Kearney’s process, somewhat narrowing the typically unrestricted approach to collage. However, Kearney does not to adhere to a literal interpretation of the words he chooses; his intention is not to create a pictorial dictionary, but rather an intuitive rendition of what the words evoke in his mind. The result is a series of alluring configurations that, when combined with their associated words, present a visual-linguistic connection that is oblique and peculiar.

Jason Kearney. Desuetude, 2015; digital collage; 8.2 x 11.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Some collages in this series are more direct in their representational approach. In Desuetude (2015), which Beard defines as “disuse,” Kearney’s interpretation shows an interest in the political and economical reality of modern society and the ailments of mass production and waste. The two main visual components in this work seem to mirror one another. The repetitive pattern of uniformed bodies carrying placards of countless tires becomes a reflection of the grim, albeit poetic, connotations of desuetude. This collage speaks to the contemporary cycle of production and disposability, and in an inverted way harkens back to political posters from the socialist era, which sought to reflect labor in a favorable light. In Desuetude, we see the interchangeability of humankind and object in an almost literal depiction of this condition.

Jason Kearney. Beleaguer, 2015; digital collage; 11.8 x 11.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Kearney began The 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language book as a backburner project, but the open-ended process has enabled him to gauge the change in his perception over time, as well as assess his subjective interpretation of each definition. Kearney recently began working with film, and has found in the stitching process of this medium yet another process of layering that resembles the technique of collage. For Kearney, the space that exists between language, narrative, and the ambiguous is one that is rich with possibility, informing his practice through various selected mediums.

Jason Kearney. Becoming, 2015; digital collage; 11.8 x 11.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Jason Kearney constructs surreal pieces of modern digital collage art under the name CUTS. He also creates polemical mixed-media art that deals with current issues that are considered to be misrepresented in contemporary politics and the mainstream Irish media. Recently he has begun to utilize film and archival footage to create music videos. The first of these he has produced is the video for Lisa O Neill’s “Pothole in the Sky.” Kearney is also a member of a multidisciplinary arts organization in Dublin, A4 Sounds, where he frequently shows his works and also has a studio.

Ashley Pastore. Floribunda; lino-block print, cut magazine on board; 48 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Hailing from Erie, Pennsylvania, where she currently lives and works, Pastore studied material studies and printmaking at the Cleveland Institute of Arts, indicating an appreciation for tactility that she incorporates into her practice. Floribunda is a piece that demonstrates Pastore’s knack for the material. Using a combination of lino-block print and collage, Pastore has layered magazine cutouts of flora and fauna onto a flat, patterned background to create an intricate, textured canvas of colors and forms.

Ashley Pastore. Can’t See a Thing; pen, cut magazine; 50 x 28 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

To produce a sense of depth in her paper compositions, Pastore performs the manual process of pattern repetition. At first glance, Can’t See a Thing looks like an image of rocky terrain—perhaps a cut out from a geology magazine—but in reality, the boulder-like effect is created through an infinite number of hand-drawn circles that are so small they appear to be more like specks. For Pastore, this technique serves practical and conceptual dimensions, which both connect to the notion of time. In the reverie-inducing process of creating countless circles, a sense of presence is conjured. The attempt to memorialize a collective conscience is reflected in the tiny circles producing a larger whole. The very act of Pastore’s creation and the time it entails is, in a sense, a tribute to the seemingly insignificant ways in which people choose to spend their time, that yet ultimately adds to the “vastness of the human experience.”

Ashley Pastore. The Divine Difference; acetone transfer, cut magazine; 31 x 21 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The notion of the individual within the collective is a running theme throughout Pastore’s body of work. In The Divine Difference, for example, the contrast in scale between the male figure and the amalgamation of world imagery branching out across the canvas is a testament to the dichotomy in the human condition—of being at once distinct and connected. In Yolo, Pastore inverts the scale, making the human figure the centerpiece of the work amid a dual pattern of lines and geometric forms. In this work, the atom-like composition surrounding the human face becomes symbolic of the single unifying unit that lies at the core of all matter, thereby emphasizing the interconnectedness of the universe.

Ashley Pastore. YOLO; lino-block print, acetone transfer, cut magazine; 23 x 26 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

While there is a discernible humor in Pastore’s work (in Real Women Make Their Mark, for example), a more salient feature of her pieces might be instead a sense of the post-apocalyptic in the space of human consciousness. By collapsing a multitude of faces, objects, and terrains onto a backdrop of spiraling motifs, Pastore has established an otherworldliness—an alternative space where the micro and the macro exist in unlikely conjunction with one another, yet appear harmonious nonetheless. In some ways, Pastore’s work is similar to that of Egyptian artist Basim Magdy, whose photographs and works on paper depict landscapes that are nameless and timeless, and are meant to call upon the viewer’s subconscious to imagine a realm without borders or temporal mandates. In the same vein, Pastore’s collages are an invitation to spend time in the space of the past, present, and future, all at once. Her use of antiquated magazines that evoke the aesthetic of another era offers an opportunity for nostalgia, while the involved layering of her canvases calls upon the present act of looking. Between memory and recognition, Pastore’s polychromatic compositions inspire an openness toward the improbable made probable, through an appreciation for the power of imagination.

Ashley Pastore. Real Women Make Their Mark; pen, tea, cut magazine; 40 x 32 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Ashley Pastore is an American artist who lives and works in Erie, Pennsylvania. She completed her BFA at the Cleveland Institute of Art and has since shown her work in exhibitions in Texas, New Mexico, and Ohio. Some of Pastore’s residencies include one at the Austin Museum of Art in Texas and another at the Redmoon Theater in Chicago.

Morris Louis. Beth Samach, 1958; installation view; Sprüth Magers London. Photo: Steve Ruiz.

In From Wings to Fins, these tensions are more subtle still, working between legacies embedded in objects. Culled from an unspecified collection, the two Morris Louis paintings, Beth Samach (1958) and Gamma (1960), play multiple roles: They are asked to represent the ideals and aspirations of a historical moment of great confidence and aspiration, and to model the falling motion of collapsing buildings in their blooming color drags. In the main space, the wide Beth Samach hangs before two vitrines in which National Geographic magazines are arranged, each with pages curved back in floral loops. Nearby, mounted to the gallery wall, a replica of an architectural security device mimics these radial shapes. The work is titled Fence (After Owen Luder) (2013) and, like the beautifully encased magazines, this archaeological original—discovered among the wreckage of Owen Luder’s Trinity Square car park in Gateshead—has undergone an artistic transmutation, now recast in bronze.

In a second room, Louis’ portrait-scale Gamma shares a corner with Gaillard’s Gates BSC (2013), a rubbing of two manhole covers from Baltimore, Maryland. According to the gallery, Gaillard produced the work while touring Louis’ hometown, memorializing the civic architecture while tracing his kinship with the painter. Upstairs, another National Geographic vitrine shares the space with a heavily matted Polaroid of a second architectural defense, shown fixed into its original fitting beside a concrete staircase. Next to this, an antique telescope points out of the gallery’s window, aiming at a bottle of Captain Cook white rum on a nearby roof. This last piece, Untitled (Captain Cook in the Distance) (2013) is perhaps the exhibition’s most opaque, though the first hint of the artist’s humor, which is otherwise absent in From Wings to Fins.

While billed as a group show, calling From Wings to Fins a two-man exhibition is a bit of a stretch. Louis’ work exists at the exhibition entirely at Gaillard’s pleasure, culled from the annals of modernism to function within Gaillard’s conceptual scheme. While the move is less radical than routine (by now we’ve all seen paintings brought in to function as artifacts, arranged in concert with other art or art-like objects), it effectively releases Louis’ work from its unimaginative role as illustration for Clement Greenberg, opening the work for new meanings. And one has to envy the compositional possibilities available to the blue-chip Gaillard, who can so swiftly select chunks of physical modernist canon.

From Wings to Fins will be on view at Sprüth Magers in London until November 16, 2013.