JONAS RANSON

Posted on September 1, 2012 by unit24

Print graduate of the Royal College of Art, Jonas is an artist based in East London whose work falls into two main categories which encompass the twin strands of both Fine Art Practice and Surface Design. Work is diverse, drawn equally to abstraction, portraiture, to the world of fashion, as it is to the marginal and subversive nature of supernatural themes and its association with the more disreputable forms of popular entertainment.

Vying between concentrated detail and intuitive mark-making, the qualities of the abstracted works evolves as a personalised statement of authenticity and affectation. The mosaic-like motifs offer geometrically pure terrains and engage with ideas of the exotic and synthetic. Motifs become increasingly disorientating, with layered internal space and vortex-like structures shifting the picture beyond the reality of the frame. The picture plane is a platform for the formal experimentation with space, colour, structure, reality and abstraction.

Traditional ornamentation is reconfigured as templates of abstracted information. The rich quality of the printed colour begins with fabricating hand drawn images and blueprints initially on computer. Drawing is the basis of the work, each print a different thing where an interior develops, an aesthetic idea or sensation that is intuitively led.

Achieved through treatment in both digital conversion and CMYK colour separation silkscreen technique, the work consists of large printed ‘panels’, visually complex and cartographic in form. Following the dictates of the underlying patterns in the work, Ranson departs from the depictive ‘reality’ of a design to create abstractions that Incorporate digital effects designed for the purpose of interruption, readily confusing reality, imaginary expanse and the tangible veritas of the picture plane.

Jonas Ranson is an international London based artist specialising in print and a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2003). Recent exhibitions include Corrida Humaine Solo exhibition at Wesland Place Gallery Old Street, Microcosm Departure Gallery Leeds, Linear B, Stephen Lawrence gallery London (co-curator), Christies ‘Multiplied’ Editions fair, TENT London Design Week, Salon Vogue at Royal Dalston Hotel, Celestial Contrakt at Schwartz Gallery London, and print collaborations with RISE BERLIN. Collaboration/commissions include projects with club fashion photographer Derek Ridgers for GQ Style and Justin Broberly for ID Magazine, wall papers for Dalston Superstore and Vogue Fabrics, and textile design for head of menswear at Versace, Martyn Bal.