'Energy Systems / 3: Safe in the Front End' by Joachim Coucke & Lasse Hieronymus Bo at Well Projects, Margate

Well Projects is excited to present ​‘Safe in the Front End’​, a duo presentation of new works by Joachim Coucke and ​Lasse Hieronymus Bo​, curated by Kris Lock. Through architectural facsimile and 21st century detritus, ​‘Safe in the Front End’ e​ xplores the patterns of accumulation, consumption and waste that lurk beneath the hyper connected present.

With a focus on the jittery, attention dispersing effects of internet culture, social media and communications technologies, Coucke’s sculptural works investigate the currencies of transparency and fluidity within the digital realm, and the gaps in reality and representation that these technologies engender. Repurposing a wide variety of technological waste; from old hard drives and chipsets to server housing and plastic casing, these objects trace a genealogy of 21st century connectivism; following the transmutation of primordial ooze into the modern, malleable and convenient, and back again into the flotsam and jetsam that now permeates the geology of the planet. In doing so, these works hold a vision of frictionless communication in tension with a multitude of sludgy, extractive, infrastructures that are usually hidden from view.

Coucke’s technified forms intersect here with Bo’s architectural exploration into the high energy freneticism of the city and the inequalities that exist as a result of relentless redevelopment. Using a mixture of common construction materials and laser cut plexiglass, Bo presents a series of wall panels reminiscent of the smashed glass of a storefront or an abandoned industrial building, with haphazard repair jobs reimagined as painterly gestures. Often producing works that are materially deceptive or designed to expose qualities that would usually be hidden, Bo considers ​notions of expendability, and the logic by which things lose their value and utility.

Coming together in the gallery space ​in a pursuit of some broken vision of utopia, ​‘Safe in the Front End’​ presents the unsettling reality of fast paced change. In a graveyard of obsolescence, cracked glass and outmoded material have, by some morphogenic process, reconstituted themselves into new structures, finding permanence in the disposable.