Pulling from influences that span his Caribbean heritage, voodoo traditions, devotional and Baroque art, Pol Taburet’s paintings are unique, enigmatic and immediately recognisable. While compositional and stylistic elements within the artist’s works are reminiscent of 20th Century painter Francis Bacon – specifically through their abstracted, distorted and sometimes horrifying figuration, and the two-dimensional colour blocking of the figures’ backdrops – Taburet combines acrylic paint with digital airbrushing. Through this combination of new and old technologies, the artist portrays characters that look like computer-generated avatars, perhaps representations of real people rendered through the digital. Hybridity is a notion reflected both in the figures’ reluctance to be categorised as either human or animal, as well as in the undoing of the binary between life and death. The figures appear to be in limbo, a purgatory of sorts, occupying a flattened, liminal space outside of time.
Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...
