- Venue
- Nettie Horn
- Location
- London
Lexicon quite literally means the vocabulary of a particular group, be it people, or in this case monkeys. This series shows a range of emotions and caricatures, making the monkeys seem almost human as they take on a range of personalities. As they take on these seemingly human set of emotions and personas it begins to question their identities as monkeys and even the viewer’s identity as a human.
While being monkeys they are all unified as a species or group of beings, their separate personalities and characters distinguish them as different people, as such. This is much like the way one would consider all humans to be different, i.e. in terms of not everyone likes the same things looks the same way etc, this almost confusion or haziness is again conveyed by this ambiguity of humans supposedly being descendants of prime apes.
The emotions are raw and obvious as many human ones are, anger etc. This collection or lexicon of expressions, bridge this gap between the two races, juxtaposing a civilised world of human hobbies and emotions with the seemingly primal world of apes.
The items that the monkeys are interacting with, while many of them being human in their relationship to the monkey, are however not considered recent, pocket watch for example. This could suggest symbolism of seemingly primal decisions made though the modernity of our culture. Seeing social situations such as slavery (monkey (chain)), which is a primal power hungry action, rise and fall.
The paintings are done with fine brush strokes in watercolour, this seems aptly relevant in displaying the fragile mind of a human, that seems at times so easily transformed into a primal machine that is ape like in instinct. Again posing this against the seemingly civilised mannerisms of many of the monkeys. What can be said for certain is that Biel is conscious of individuality, and in this he has raised many questions about identity and also possibly in terms of futurist ideas of progression in society, the post modernity of world as it is.
