For the 2018 edition of Art Projects, PAPER is teaming up with LLE gallery from Cardiff. The exhibition, Lost In Space, focussing on the idea of being enveloped in some sort of trance state, whether through immersive environments, a drug induced euphoria, or in a dreamlike trance. The works consider the nature of youth subcultures as seen through the digital age; however, each artist employs the analogue and somewhat anachronistic mediums of painting and drawing to render these worlds.

PAPER are showcasing new work by three artists. The first, Cardiff based artist James Moore, is heavily informed by the aesthetics of games, comics, sci-fi novels and, sometimes, by real places. These paintings all picture something expansive, something concrete, conjured up from fictional environments, sketches and photographs. One work may depict a virtual space, from an imagined world, while another might show a city park or a building from the real world. The painted scenes are never unbelievable spaces – they always stay close to the real, on the border of fiction.

Similarly the work of Ilona Kiss is equality intangible as she draws inspiration from her half remembered dream state, collective memory, and the question of place and belonging. The poetic qualities of uncertain situations influence her work as such and connect with traditional genres like Romanticism. Her work is drawn to ambiguity and she is interested in the tension between the familiar and the weird, and the real and the imaginary. Darkness and a sense of sadness surface in her work.

David Hancock discusses how anachronistic practices are shaping digital identities. This work merges virtual environments with still life. Presenting Asian Ball-jointed dolls as a conduit between the virtual and its own status as a still life object. Hancock places these objects within an environment taken from Second Life. As a platform, Second Life had the potential to become an online utopia of individual world builders, but these towns and cities are now sparsely populated ghost-towns. Participation in these niche subcultures is via avatars, in which complex worlds are created in detail and inhabited by proxy.

LLE are exhibiting new work by Cardiff-based artists Casper White and Aishan Yu, and Iwan Lewis, who is based in Anglesey, North Wales.
David Hancock

Ophelia
Watercolour & Gouache on Paper
56 x 76cm
2017
£2000 (framed)
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Waterfalls
Watercolour & Gouache on Paper
56 x 76cm
2017
£2000 (framed)
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The Castaway
Watercolour on Paper
76 x 56cm
2017
£2000 (framed)
Click to purchase this work via Paypal

The Shore
Watercolour on Paper
76 x 56cm
2017
£2000 (framed)
Click to purchase this work via Paypal

James Moore

Mr & Mrs Cobain at TJ's, Newport, AD1991
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

Jimi Hendrix Abandons Cardiff AD1967
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

Freeze Exhibition, Exterior View, London Docklands AD 1988
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

ESA Satellite Wreckage in the Bristol Channel 23 June 2016
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

Michael Jackson staying on the entire top floor of the Holiday Inn, Cardiff, during the Bad Tour 1988
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

Tower Block Dreams
Oil on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017

Ilona Kiss

Tider
Pencil on Bristol Board
65 x 50cm
2017

Monologue
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2017

Moth
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2016

Reigen
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2016

Throne
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2017

The Unthing
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2017

Catman
Pencil on Bristol Board
30 x 21cm
2017