Joshua Griffit

"Bearing Souvenirs #2"

The Max and Lillian Candiotty Building, 1st, 3rd floor

Joshua Griffith is on the move. So claimed Gideon Ofrat in the 1990s. According to Ofrat, in those years Griffit – through his paintings – traveled in cars, trams, ships, carriages, motorcycles, airplanes, horses, sail and motor boats, gondolas, and anything that could take him away from here, in a journey of disengagement, of distancing, of “let my part in life not be with you,” of someone who has excluded himself in the way of the wicked son of the Pesach Haggadah, so that his rejection borders on heresy.

But lately, Griffit has nearly exhausted the sense of distance his journeys in the spatial dimensions, and therefore – in order to get even further – he began incorporating the fourth dimension into his travels. Griffit, as can be seen in his contemporary work, travels in space and time to eras, places, and intersections in the history of art, returning with “souvenirs” or “quotes.”

In a technique which could be called “copy-paste,” he gathers figures and objects from the works of other artists and rearranges them in novel contexts, thus linking past and present in a way that can reveal, by extrapolation, the unraveling of a plot in which we all play starring roles.

Griffit’s comments on art history, the ways in which he “borrows and cites” from famous, familiar works, indicate a certain lack of perfection, a process that we witness as it unfolds, a journey that has yet to reach its destination. This transience and imperfection attest to a certain sense of urgency, a need to bring back into the reality of our lives those cultural and artistic assets that may be forgotten and lost in the course of the here-and-now. In this sense, Griffit’s current works can be viewed as “salvage paintings,” created under a dictate to “paint while it’s still possible”.