← John O’Connor Chelsea Pop Up Solo Exhibition


John O’Connor

← Prev
Next →

John O’Connor - "Car Crash," 2023, Colored pencil and graphite on paper, 85 x 69.75 inches In a car crash chain, the physics (example of Newton’s Laws of Motion) involves rapid changes in momentum as kinetic energy from one car is transferred at impact to the next car, which then transfers energy to the following car, and so on. This creates a coiling effect that expands and contracts with each successive crash. I thought of this as analogous to societal transfer of wealth from poor to rich. The evidence of this transference is seen in products and assets—vehicles—that lose function as they simultaneously gain form as luxury objects. To me, this nal layer of transfer is comparable to how a wormhole suggests passage through space-time. This drawing begins at the top left with one of the least expensive cars in the US, a Honda Civic, which “crashes” into a more expensive car, and so on. The value of each successive car rises incrementally, eventually peaking with the most expensive luxury vehicle available for purchase, a Lotus. After this phase, cars from lms and television shows crash into each other, followed by cartoon cars and ctional ones. In the center, the car as a form becomes an abstraction and is absorbed into a wormhole-like space, with colors that loop back to the starting point, perpetuating an endless car crash chain. The spiraling geometric bands that structure the drawing increase and decrease in scale proportionately as the drawing moves centripetally, while its ideas expand centrifugally. Each car changes direction to imply both transfer of energy and alternating point of view—as if we were in the crashing car, and simultaneously in the one being crashed into.

“Car Crash,” 2023, Colored pencil and graphite on paper, 85 x 69.75 inches
In a car crash chain, the physics (example of Newton’s Laws of Motion) involves rapid changes in momentum as kinetic energy from one car is transferred at impact to the next car, which then transfers energy to the following car, and so on. This creates a coiling effect that expands and contracts with each successive crash. I thought of this as analogous to societal transfer of wealth from poor to rich. The evidence of this transference is seen in products and assets—vehicles—that lose function as they simultaneously gain form as luxury objects. To me, this nal layer of transfer is comparable to how a wormhole suggests passage through space-time.
This drawing begins at the top left with one of the least expensive cars in the US, a Honda Civic, which “crashes” into a more expensive car, and so on. The value of each successive car rises incrementally, eventually peaking with the most expensive luxury vehicle available for purchase, a Lotus. After this phase, cars from lms and television shows crash into each other, followed by cartoon cars and ctional ones. In the center, the car as a form becomes an abstraction and is absorbed into a wormhole-like space, with colors that loop back to the starting point, perpetuating an endless car crash chain.
The spiraling geometric bands that structure the drawing increase and decrease in scale proportionately as the drawing moves centripetally, while its ideas expand centrifugally. Each car changes direction to imply both transfer of energy and alternating point of view—as if we were in the crashing car, and simultaneously in the one being crashed into.

← Prev
Next →