Axon | Robert Bell

4.10.14 – 1.11.14
LIVE EVENT: Robert Bell in collaboration with Joe Goddard
24.10.14 | 7 – 10pm

Block 336 is pleased to present AXON, an immersive environment of paintings, projections and constructed installations by London based artist Robert Bell. Extending the abstract marks and highly worked surfaces of his wall-based paintings, Bell’s animated revolving forms, pulsating fields and mutating membranes throb and reflect against the oily surfaces of the gallery walls. Mysterious in origin and ambiguous in scale, these virtual and material creations remind us of the micro or macro realm, the biological, the chemical or chemically induced.

In neurophysiological terms, an axon is a conduit, a string-like component of a nerve fibre that carries electrical impulses away from neuron cells and towards the muscles or glands. Like the telegraph wires that once linked the exchange to the phone, the axon is the axis that connects the body to its affects and agencies. Bell’s AXON is the medium by which the process-driven and at times unstable concerns of his very physical painting practice are carried through into brilliant and dizzyingly saturated digital conclusions.

AXON presents painting as experience – as a bewildering 360-degree phenomenon, a spinning and fluctuating contraction of time, body, memory, and event. Vibrating, momentary and utterly mesmerising, AXON hovers between two worlds.

In conjunction with AXON on the 24th October, from 7 – 10pm Block 336 will host an audio-visual collaboration between Robert Bell and musician, Hot Chip member and one half of The 2 Bears Joe Goddard. This is a free event.

Robert Bell gained an MA in Fine Art Painting from City and Guilds Art School in 2011. He is an original member of the team at Block 336 and has a professional background in the production of architectural installations and experimental 3D modeling and visualization.