‘‘Carbondated Faith’’, Jason Greig
(Brett McDowell)
JASON GREIG is renowned for his idiosyncratic synergy of historical influences including Goya, Gothic Art, French Symbolism, and pop cultural manifestations of melancholic bleakness. Greig expresses this particular melding of influences in the mediums of print, charcoal drawings and oil paintings. In terms of subject matter, Greig’s blend of melancholy manifests most characteristically in the form of a lone figure in a voided landscape, such as an arid mountainous region or a subterranean cave. The figure tends to be angular, naked, shrouded or cloaked. While Greig’s works frequently depict tortured figures, the bleakness is knowing and wry rather than grimly unrelenting.
While taking into consideration these traditional readings of Greig’s work, the title of his latest exhibition ‘‘Carbondated Faith’’ made me wonder whether or not it might be possible to interpret this body of work through a lens of ecological crisis and faith? Is it possible to carbondate faith? Or perhaps, to state the question more accurately, is it possible to carbondate the apparatuses of faith? Carbon dating seemingly makes allusions to the fact that human culture is contributing a layer to the geological record (plastic, particulate matter, nuclear waste). With his focus on landscapes largely devoid of life, Greig could be asking whether we have faith in the systems that are bringing us ever closer to ecological collapse.