Paul Wager / The mask of anarchy "Better than James Brown"
Yesterday's installation of "The Mask of Anarchy" and Paul Wager himself feeling "better than James Brown" - a fun, exhausting but a very rewarding day for many reasons, namely for the confluence of energies that came to share a common vision and convey it into concrete.
Wager is a curious case, turning his back onto the art world and working as a recluse for many years in his native Hartlepool. Those anarchic, unapologetic declarations - or paintings - are meticulously done by hand. Wager's works are 'rage against the machine'; he usurps machined congruity and reclaims the human hand. It is not enough to see these works in photo, I urge everyone to come and view them in situ from April 15th at 30 Cork Street, London.
I am so happy to be the custodian of a small part of his estate, as once again after a long interval I feel a tingling in what was otherwise a dead reserve from the numbing s**t that I have come to be accustomed to - s**t that renders art useless both because of lack of substance and it's lack of purpose for both the creator and his people.
These works draw on anarchic sentiments, yet this is not another call for blood, rather a charge for a very personal insurgence, that from within. But why? To mo**st the dormant spirit into a personal unrest. Hail Wager.
E.D