Pangolin London presents Telltale Forms, a solo exhibition by the ever-inventive sculptor Jon Buck. Charting over four decades of his career, this exhibition intertwines Buck’s early explorations in sculpture with his most recent works. Through his distinctive use of humour, colour, pattern, and form, Buck delves into profound universal themes – what it means to be human, our connection to nature, and the cultural narratives that both shape and define us.
Throughout his career, Jon Buck has sought to address fundamental questions about humanity’s place in the world: “What do we feel about ourselves as human beings, about our relationship to each other, to other creatures, and to the wider environment in general?”. Buck’s work transcends the immediate visual appeal of contemporaries like Keith Haring, inviting deeper engagement through multi-layered meaning and thought-provoking themes.
From his formative years studying the figure as a reaction to the ‘Caro-esque minimalism’ of the 1970s, to his transformative visit to the Pech Merle prehistoric caves in 1994 – where he encountered 25,000-year-old prehistoric art – Buck’s journey has been one of continual discovery. These pivotal moments have shaped his understanding of art as a process inseparable from the cultural evolution of life itself.
Buck’s ability to blend the personal and the universal is at the heart of Telltale Forms. His sculptures seamlessly merge his own memories with broader cultural and evolutionary narratives. For example, he reflects on two significant moments from 1974: painting identification plaques for the aviaries at Bristol Zoo where he worked, and the groundbreaking discovery of the 3.2-million-year-old fossil “Lucy” in Ethiopia, which transformed our understanding of human evolution. These moments, both deeply personal and historically significant, converge in Buck’s work as metaphors for our shared existence in the Anthropocene.
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