LONDON.- The second solo exhibition at Hang-Up by artist Tim Fishlock opened Friday 31 May. Introversion Immersion questions our information saturated age and asks us to confront what the deluge of opinion, narcissism and image overkill is doing to our society.

The exhibition tackles the dreaded compulsions of social media and our own existential plight with thought-provoking and playful irreverence. Fishlock continues his shrewd comment on the fragile state of society and our place within it through his vibrant, text-based paintings, reflecting on our uneasy relationship with technology and how we are slave to our own invention.

A site-specific lightbox installation takes over the entire Hang-Up basement bunker. Visitors will be invited down into ‘the temple of ME’, an enclosed ‘room’ of 72 light boxes ranged floor to ceiling. Flooded with a beguiling fusion of words and colours, we are confronted with the self-obsessed fiction served up every day.

“In an era when more people than ever get everything they want, everything becomes merely satisfactory. The ‘temple of ME’ proves to be one of unrealistic expectations.” - Tim Fishlock

Upstairs, a series of six new paintings entitled Satisfactory Living are unified by the repetition of ME ME ME; Ego, Welcome Me, Handle Me, Provoke Me, Message Me, presented alongside a heavy punchbag, stitched in leather, appliquéd with the word ‘ME’.

The Future Leaks Out comprises 85 solid wooden blocks in four different lengths referencing the William Burroughs’ quote “when you cut into the present, the future leaks out”. Careful consideration was given to the selection of words, which, like much of the artist’s work, allude to a fairly misanthropic, dystopian world-view. This establishes a striking contrast between the subject matter and a material form that is synonymous with childhood creativity and exploration.

Fishlock’s important new work reminds us that our capacity to see, feel and question is circumscribed by the type of world we are immersed in. This timely exhibition challenges us to truly look and think about how we live.

Tim Fishlock: A Goldsmiths’ graduate, Tim Fishlock spent twenty years working in most of the creative industries before reinventing himself as Oddly Head in 2015. Following the hugely successful inaugural show REPEAT AFTER ME at Hang-Up Gallery in August 2017, the London-based artist has gone on to create sell out series of work and collaborated on several exciting projects and exhibitions. He has shown work in prestigious institutions in London including the Design Museum and the Royal Academy, where two of his works were selected by Grayson Perry for the 250th RA Summer Show.