As a child I dreamed of becoming an archeologist. I imagined scouring ancient ruins and fragmentary images of life and death inside dark caves where humans lived thousands of years before me. Encountering Levi Hawken's recent wall work located in a secret tunnel in the Leith, armed only with a torch, instilled me with the same sense of awe I might have experienced had I decided to follow this dream. Having only a small shard of light to guide one across the impressive scale of this untitled mural allows the viewer to have an experience which is truly intimate. Consisting of geometric forms in a muted colour palette, with each line intersecting another, each line presents the viewer with a contradiction as there is no fixed point. Geometric forms are an integral part of Hawken's visual vocabulary, evidenced by his recent Willful damage exhibition at None gallery. Using a monochromatic palette it feels as though it has always been apart of the environment, with some water damage and the subsequent growth of plants impinging on the concrete wall.
In creating the work in this kind of environment, Hawke is subverting traditional modes of display. To get to the mural one must go on an adventure, which includes climbing through bush and down an intimidating pile of rocks. There is a remarkable contrast between depth and surface, as it seems to be engrained with a sense of movement, similar to that of a rollarcoaster. It playfully suggests three dimensionality, yet it retains a two dimensional Modernist formalism. This highlights Hawken's active engagement with Modernist conventions and abstraction. As it reflects aspects of German expressionist Franz Mark and a kinetic embodiment of the theories of Kandinsky. The work is innately autonomous and can also be likened to a tomb, with the sharp lines of a hawk acting as a momento mori for both his late Grandfather and close friend who died earlier this year. In this way the lines appear to me to resemble hieroglyphic symbols moving your eye across the wall like an archeologist studying an ancient inscription.
-Hana Aoake
