Artist: Johnny Izatt-Lowry

When one talks about the work of Johnny Izatt-Lowry, one often wants to start with the classic movie trailer intro “In a world where…” (add stirring music). He takes from one world and places it into another. The first world is a fast-moving, stressful and at times dark one - the digital world. The other is ours - the physical. The pathos employed by Izatt-Lowry also resembles an epic; the works are understood as a wide-ranging, comprehensive narrative of a reality of our time.

In the past, the theatre was “die Bretter, die die Welt bedeuten” (the stage that meant the world - Schiller); today it is the computer. Each of Izatt-Lowry’s compositions begins with a collage made from drawings and photos, taken from an endless stream of digital images. They are usually then painted from memory or simply the idea of what something might look like. For each work in this show, the initial inspiration came from things surrounding the artist in his daily life, found in, and just outside of his flat. What begins as a document of daily life, through various layers of manipulation, results in a painting. This approach is also translated formally: the works appear like memory clouds, blurred and veiled. Like fleeting thoughts or dreams of something - they are already fading visually, not quite tangible, or conversely, they are only slowly coming into focus. Just like in our mind's eye after indulging in scrolling.

You could say that Izatt-Lowry breathes life back into the fast pace and irrelevance of digital images. He gives the image back its aura in the age of digital reproduction. And he does this with great sensitivity, time and brilliance. When one looks at his work, one soon realises that time must be dedicated to it - the work demands it from you.

His medium of choice is still soft pastel. The support is however no longer crepe fabric, but linen canvas. His meticulous, densely spread application of the pastel chalk roughens the surface. It gives the works a smoky, grainy background that almost pixelates the picture in a pointillist manner. Here, too, a formal connection to the digital source material becomes recognisable.

A particular ambiguity of concept and painterly beauty are both major qualities of Izatt-Lowry's work. They are in perfect harmony. The perspectives are mostly awkward and surrealistic, with subjects that at times hark back to a bygone era, although certainly informed by a digital age. A sense of lost silence and its value emerges. Things that we no longer pay enough attention to. His still-lifes ask: where is there still silence?

A monumental field of flowers hangs in the centre of the exhibition. Flowers, as if copied and pasted hundreds of times, fill the almost three-metre-wide canvas. It is an homage to devotion and dreaminess, but also to the beauty of nature. The assembly-line-like flower, taken from the net, is transformed by hand and with devotion, into a field of repeating originals. Almost like Warhol's work, but for our age. Not far away, a vintage car joins the paintings. A certain nostalgia arises. Images of classic films and chase scenes come to mind. The size and perspective are instantly striking, as is the lighting. The impression of the uncanny, which is central to Izatt-Lowry's work, is reinforced by the feeling of uncertainty with which the vehicle emerges from the darkness. Two other still-lifes are also held in twilight. One might ask whether this is about romanticism, a new approach to a familiar theme or the fact that all of this is slowly fading, receding into the past and becoming difficult to grasp. Matisse and Cézanne are always close by. They have been reproduced almost as often as the Mona Lisa. Their exhibition catalogues used to be indispensable sources of reference for almost every artist. Today they exist as much as objects as they do for the value of their contents. What does that transfiguration mean, and what category of object does it produce? Izatt-Lowry holds on to those sources, remembers them and makes you feel them again.

In, and just outside of also reminds us of the “what” outside the box. Today, the world within our own four walls is much bigger than the one outside. The inside is transported to the outside via the network. From inside you have more access to outside than from outside. In an increasingly fast-paced digital world, you can't miss the boat or you'll be left behind. Izatt-Lowry pools this uncertainty in his works and overlays it with calm and prudence. With his genre-spanning works he causes us to see and appreciate more precisely, which is probably one of today’s greatest assets.