Dale Grimshaw's urban art is not only cool it also brings up all sorts of fascinating ideas about the speed of life and the pace of change and the psychological damage it can inflict. When we watch TV, movies or browse the Internet we are drawing on ancient instincts that were intended to help us survive in the wild. Chimps, and most apes, have a far better short term memory than humans, they can when prompted remember far more about what they've just seen than we can. We as a species used to be the same, we would survey our environment for food, water, prey, and of course enemies be they animals or other humans. However the human mind will always have its limits, we can progress technologically far quicker than we can evolve intellect and understanding, and our present society is a testament to that fact.
We live in a scatological universe, bombarded by sensory data, images, sounds and feelings everyday. The brain serves as a filter, functioning on the premise that time is linear and space is quantifiable. If we could record what our minds receive we'd be shocked at the mess that funnels into the cerebellum everyday. It's a mishmash of chaotic imagery and sound, tactile response, taste and emotions that are enough to drive anyone crazy, no matter how self-aware or logical they might be. What keeps us all from banging down the doors of the nearest loony bin is our ability to ignore data, too much information can be almost mentally and physically disabling, that's why when you look around your environment you immediately seek out the familiar.
The rest is consigned to depth perception and peripheral vision. Hence the cloud or aura around any focused perception. The same goes for sound and feeling. If you listen carefully you'll probably hear at least a slight hum of technology around you, once you stop paying attention it will eventually fade into a general background noise. If you focus on a book on a shelf it will most likely be one you have read and have an emotional connection with, be it positive or negative, then your eyes will skim for more familiar titles, blurring as they travel between the printed spines.
There are of course physical limitations to our senses, but the truth is most of perception is steered by a psychological and/or emotional need, more often than not an immediate one. If we focus on the processes and actions of our minds, we enter something akin to a subjective data grid. In that perceptual space we organise everything according to instinct, nurture, culture and personality. No two people see the world in exactly the same way, our ability to perceive is as unique to each of us as fingerprints. All very similar but never exactly the same. To be crazy is to be unable to align one's own perceptual reality in a series of compromises with all others. Popularity, power, fame, and many other accolades of human achievement are for the main part based on the ability to 'read' cycles and systems of perceptual value and project a mean average.
Grimshaw's work conveys much of the 'in between' moments of perceptions, where expressions change, bodies morph, colours blur together. Life is getting faster and Grimshaw depicts the brink of chaos perfectly. His paintings exuberantly collide logic and emotions in a fraught and angst-ridden state, exploring the very limit of what the human psyche can bear. Uniquely delving into a very human reaction to the excess of pressures and emotionally damaging apsects of living a thoroughly modern life. Like a series of out takes from existence, he proverbially snapshots those blips in the ionosphere of social norm and homogeneous thought, to intersperse the canvas with snippets and slices from an inner hell. His treatment of spiritual and religious iconography and ideals, blended with infractions of the psychological state are both disturbing and beautiful.
Dale was born in Lancashire in 1971, studied at Blackburn College of Art before attaining a his Bachelor of Arts degree at Middlesex University. He's won the Apthorp Fund for young artists and the Liquitex Student Award in the USA. He's exhibited at the Rainbird Gallery in Farringdon, Signal Gallery Hoxton and public collections include Trent Park, Middlesex University and the London Borough of Barnet. He's been featured in Fad Magazine and The Independent. See and buy his work at www.dalegrimshaw.com.
