Latitudes [catalogue excerpt] by Amy Karlinski
catalogue published in conjunction with the international, group touring exhibition "Latitudes"

Les Newman’s work, The Thought Bubbles also takes stock of the everyday, linked to strategies seen elsewhere in Latitudes by Paul Butler, William Eakin and Richard Dyck. Everyday life is mediated by the semiotic means of our expression, be this the linguistic or digital codes of dictionaries or computers, scientific modeling, pie charts, bar graphs and mathematical tables. Newman’s series of cheeky emblems, some familiar from the reading codes of comics, others iconic shorthand for ideas about communicating, locate this work as both critical and comedic. He has included cloud forms and thought balloons as well as simple graphically conceived objects that have become lost in translation from one process to another.
Newman begins with simple drawing software programs and uncomplicated graphic signs, transforming the digital information by making photographic prints from his screen. The emphatically green and flat inelegant grounds allow us to examine the existing models within which our thinking, feeling and communicating may proceed. From the desktop of the drawing programs embedded in our binary code, once organic lines appear in mathematical increments, creating a jagged line when enlarged. The symmetrically square prints allow the audience to consider the existing formulae for personal use. The thought balloons are blank, circumscribed templates for the twenty first century. At his recent exhibition at aceartinc in Winnipeg, Newman filled some of these models with the angst of monologues from real or imagined relationships. The conversations and expression were barely contained within their mathematical abstractions. The use of photography, as opposed to painting or drawing in Newman’s work suggest a tussle with technology to make it both accountable and expressive beyond its programmatic design