Luke is an artist from Colne, an industrial town in the North of England. After studying art at Saint Martin's school in London, he left for France to pursue his artistic career. Today, he lives and works between Roubaix and Paris.
As part of the exhibition "A Consumer Product" Newton pinpoints the failings of our society with a typically British humor.
His work unfolds on all kinds of media: He uses collage, sculpture and painting. The visual artist particularly likes to assemble materials to which we attribute a minor aesthetic value.
Grocery packages become skulls, the curve of a heart turns into a sharp blade, and colored pencils come together as guns. The extremes come together in a playful and offbeat way; the observer is drawn into a visual game where they can question the signs of thier daily life at leisure.
The works on display have a clean form, their finishes smooth and meticulous that they seem to come from an industrial production line. The artist does not hesitate to repeat in series some of his productions by introducing slight variations here and there.
Beneath their pop and manufactured appearance, Luke's creations have strong conceptual overtones. At first glance his pieces seem banal and everyday. Yet on closer inspection we see a misappropriation of their symbolic value. The feeling of artificiality fades and a disturbing paradox emerges on the surface.
As Luke likes to say, “The key is to open the door. or “The key is to open the door.". The meaning of his works remains open to interpretation and the artist invites us to consume the exhibition without moderation.
Claudia Valencia 2022
