WREATH
“Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm. Nor Question much. That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm”-John Donne
An image of a wreath is a common symbol linking remembrance and human memory to the human body. It can symbolize desire, celebration, loss and the great and leveling truths that delineate the limitations of human endeavor. The circle in art draws a line between the interior and the external world and the wreath, an elaborated circle, is a symbol of the human need to visualize longevity and continuation.
The drawings in this exhibition are meditations on grief but also function to question grief itself. Here the wreath becomes a vessel for absence, a symbol of silence, an absence that is ever-present, yet not often discussed.
Formally, the wreath or circle also suggests a visual reference to the human body, the sensual zone of the mouth, making an “O” as suggested in the drawing “Mouth 2, from Wild Man Series”. In the drawing “Wreath, Pentacle” Logan draws his own naked body repeatedly, intertwined in the leaves of the wreath extending portraiture to the surreal, in a Continuation of his dialogue with the queer body politic.
Engaging personal explorations of landscape and overlapping art-historic motifs, these highly worked drawings in both pastel and blue pencil combine botanical observation with high Victorian aestheticism and romanticism. Each of these works and are a reconsideration of the Victorian tradition of memento mori made fashionable by Queen Victoria.
