Chunks of life: Works of art by Russell West

Galerie Eurasia, Brussels
7 April – 7 May 2005

Inherent in chaos, there is a possibility of order – or more precisely, of a
multitude of alternative states of affairs that we may call order. Chaos is
transformed into order by choice. The everyday choices we make, the
things we do, the goods we buy, the food we eat, the things we throw
away, either consciously or without reflection, creates and re-creates our
environment. Every day, we re-produce the world we live in. Every day, we
turn chaos into order – and order into chaos.

Russell West strives to make us conscious of the choices that we make in
our daily lives. Seemingly random everyday choices produce an overall
order, a balance between society and nature. Quite often, the balance is
delicate, and the fragile order is constantly being threatened of being
plunged into chaos and entropy by the slightest disruption.

The focus of the work of Russell West is on the interaction of society and
nature in an urban environment. He has lived for several years in the
populous cities of East Asia; at the moment, he lives and works in London.
The life in a megapolis – both in the east and the west – is the backdrop of
all his work, and he has developed a keen sense of discovering structure
amidst urban chaos, of mapping out solid patterns of social conduct in
situations where, to an untrained eye, all appears to be flux.  

Recycling is a key theme in Russell West’s work. His paintings and sculp-
tures are entirely made up of recycled everyday materials. This choice of
materials, together with the faithfulness to the notion of recycling, allows
him simultaneously to be both concrete and abstract. The point of depart-
ure is always the concrete everyday reality of people – quite often, of poor
people whose choices are extremely limited – in an urban environment. At
the same time, each of his works poses questions on essential themes at
high level of abstraction: the reality of poverty and underdevelopment, co-
existence of affluence and deprivation, relation between modernity and
tradition, sustainability of the consumption society, and the quest for
ecologically sound ways of life in the most densely populated parts of the
world.