John Stark’s dystopic, post-apocalyptic paintings reference the past to try and understand the future. In this, they are deeply influenced by the history of Western art: the Germanic Gothic, the dark existence before the advent of Reason, the haunting superstitions of the medieval mind which bubbled up in the visions of artists such as Salvator Rosa in his witch paintings or the neo-classical bacchanales of Poussin. On the other hand there is also contemporary kitsch and fantasy painting, suggesting how the pre-modern mentality is so lost to us that it now that it constitutes an ‘Other’. Stark’s paintings travel all these roads at once to explore how the mythical mindset still continues to reassert itself.
