Dave Sealey

Remember the other day I commented on Tobin Florio from Showrooms at work? Well it seems there's another genius (photographer) who works on the Gardening dept, Dave Sealey.

His photography is a very dangerous foray into the realms of photoshop photography residing somewhere between abstract pop-art collages of the 1970s and surrealist still-life of the early 20th century. The meeting point between these two schools is a delicate and precocious commentary on some very accessible themes, without the standard pretention to boot.

My personal taste in photography doens't really involve so much of the synthetic adage that the genre is evolving into - I'm more loathed to the idea of computer expression than I am tempted to spend time in appreciation of it. Yet something in Dave Sealey's art is as captivating as it is off-the-wall. The kind of insubordinate revolution without the obligatory rebellion within the medium does the artist credit and the idea that true cathartic expression (with pieces like o and A Tale of Two Cities) is something I expect is harder to acheive on screen than it is walking around Norfolk with your SLR and filter bag so maybe in future I should be slower to laugh off new ideas.

I think Dave Sealey is still under the umberella of the generic amateur circle but with such a lateral mind and eye for originality I can't imagine his art won't make a sucess of him. The art scene at the moment (not that I'm a critic) needs more free thinkers. Whether it's blotchy still-life form, cubism, or desecrating the canvas, the history of art has long proved to show there's genius in furthering the limits of permissible art. However, artists like Damien Hirst or David Taborn have pushed the pushing of limits too far and this is now no longer genius or art. Real post-millenium genius in originality comes from bringing something new to the arena, without the need to establish new boundries or questionning the existing framework that comprises the genre, and this is the fruit of Dave Sealey's art.

However, inspite of this amateur first impression, Dave shows a very confident congruency in style which is often somehow lacking in a lot of amateur artists. He has a fresh voice and the means to develop and own this sub-genre of photoshop orthodox surrealism and with the right motivation I honestly think this guy has it in him to make a name for himself.