The sheer size and colour of David Elliot’s works currently on show at Joyce Yahouda Gallery are imposing. You feel as though the canvases are going to suck you in, like Alice stepping through the looking glass. Lumious, smooth, and in a seeming jumble, a random collection of images are scattered across the picture plane: realistically rendered fruit, cats, and toys, super-sized computer icons, wood-cuts, and newspaper clippings. Sometimes the elements float on Pop Art inspired backgrounds, sometimes they seem trapped in a tight box, fighting to get out.

At first blush Elliot’s works look like giant collages, but the recurring motif of the shiny, delicious apples betray clear signs of careful brush strokes, and it’s this painterly quality which holds all the pieces together.

At the core of Elliot’s work is the concept of the still life, in particular the ‘vanitas’. What used to be a somber contemplation of the transience of life in 17th century European painting has been given a contemporary update by this artist. Instead of skulls, decaying fruit, and hourglasses he conjures up a disorienting riot of 20th century symbols, both mundane and profound. In a world as perpetually rushed as ours, a meditation on the impermanence of life becomes ever more poignant.

Galerie Joyce Yahouda
space 516
David Elliot
Lullaby
February 17 – March 26, 2011
www.joyceyahoudagallery.com