Neil Wood attempts to build a body of work with a variety of means and media, all tied together by some essential common elements – Helvetica Neue 77 Bold Condensed for example – but also narrative themes with ideas on identity, presence, surface, material symbolism, timelines, memory, cause & effect, sound, rhyme.
Humour is important, but also irony. Wood believes painting as a socially and culturally dominant activity is dead – which doesn’t stop him from loving many kinds of painting. He is generally repelled by romanticism and prefers Keith Tyson’s, or Laurent Grasso’s scientific and explorative ways, to notions of noble sentiment.
The way he works is long term mixed with short term, spontaneous works (appropriation, spur of the moment) and much larger projects which act as conceptual platforms. The result is an often systemic, interrelated, sometimes inter-dependent, group of works.
These large groups can then combine into an even bigger picture, where the variety becomes apparent – but also the common threads.
It is clear, that Wood’s work, which includes short stories, poetry, sound performance, film and photography, is hard to define – and therefore fits perfectly into the realm of Bureau Doove.
We haven’t completed a project together yet, but are working on it.
Find more info on his website here
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