Using space and the body as points of reference, Jonathan Fraser tries to understand the relationship between object, memory, and image working in diverse media toward this end. Fraser attended Kenyatta University as part of the BFA program with a major in painting and sculpture. He is currently working as a studio assistant alongside his expanding multidisciplinary practice. His work has been exhibited variously in Nairobi and was a part of the 2017 Kenya Art Fair’s Wasanii Exhibition. He lives and works in Nairobi.
‘The physical presence of objects in space as well as the impressions they leave in the mind (the furrows they create in our memories) are the overlapping shadows cast over my work. There’s a great pleasure to be had in the hardness or softness of a thing, how it holds itself up or drapes over another. And the world becomes richer because of this thing-ness when coupled with the way our minds hold and interpret information. Jonathan Fraser’s approach is a layering of many things and many ways of working so that objects appear as they do in the world and also appear as they do in our minds. The representation of objects is repeated to the point of the image losing any objective meaning and taking on the meaning given to it by the viewer at any one moment. In this way, the viewer is encouraged to ask how the same image can function differently from one composition to the next.’
