Els Hanappe Underground is pleased to present a dual exhibition with new works by Japan based artists Robert Platt (UK) and Takeshi Masada (Japan).

'Practically sublime is thus every subject matter that gives us admittedly to mark our impotence as beings of nature - but at the same time reveals in us a capability for resistance of an entirely different kind ...' Friedrich Schiller, 1793.
'Practically Sublime' attempts to re-acquaint with the traditional themes surrounding the sublime in a sublime-deprived era. Through the use of elusive imagery and subjects such as cultural phenomen. Beauty, absurd nature, and the occult are approached with an essential aesthetic of deconstruction.
The fragmented vision of the spaces and objects that occasionally appear to us, attempts to solicit a mythical experience in a mundane logo-centric era, and redefine notions of Nature/Culture in the increasingly urban context. (the artists)

Robert Platt has chosen the medium of painting to express contemporary landscape, focussing on its current meaning as an artificial or cultivated vista, in which nature plays a subdued role. Other contrasts are played out as in the references to `domesticated wild animals``, or in the appropriation through technological means of naive folk images.

Takeshi Masada is more interested in capturing motion into a single frame, instilling narration within the materiality of the paint, encouraging understanding through intuition. He uses everyday subject as can be seen in the news to question art's position and its enduring quality within a world of increasingly fleeting information and images.