Artist to showcase oil paintings glitches

A show of oil paintings made to look like glitches similar to those on TV and social media will be held in Coventry in February.

The display features more than 40 paintings by Birmingham-born Paul Lemmon at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, which he said "interrogate" the relationships people have with the online world.

The show begins with 10 works which Lemmon created using corrupted YouTube footage as his inspiration, containing images of people talking to the camera.

"My paintings look like screens but they don't behave like screens. The power doesn't run out, they don't change or need software updates, have no notifications or logins, and can't be downloaded or switched off," he said.

One definition of a glitch is a short-lived fault in a system operating otherwise as it should.

As well as the paintings, there are abstract animations showcasing the corrupted videos that he created as part of the painting process.

Lemmon said the effect also acted as a "metaphor for the masks we wear, and personas we assume for social media, as if splintering and fracturing our personality".

Although some of the paintings contain fragmented images of anonymous people, many of the photos also depict the faces of cultural icons from a pre-internet era.

They includes Richard Nixon, Madonna, Debbie Harry and David Bowie.

"By disrupting the computer's own processes for my compositions, I'm using technology in way that it's not supposed to be used, and that's art," he said.

"I'm travelling into the screen and returning with what I find there.

"With oil paint, I'm taking the digital, immaterial and making it real again, to give the viewer the pleasure of reality.

"My message for viewers is to stay with real life as much as possible."

Paul Lemmon: Through the Screen will run from 4 to 14 February.

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