Morgan Stokes

If a skeleton provides the internal architecture, what then is the exoskeleton? The exoskeleton is a hardened exterior, the protective shell that mediates between interior essence and external world. In nature, the exoskeleton is both armour and interface, a boundary that defines the relationship between self and environment. Stokes’ presentation extends the inquiry begun in 'Skeleton' (2024), pushing further into the paradoxes that emerge when painting becomes a physical entity increasingly encountered through the glowing flatness of a screen.

The paintings become organisms adapted to an environment where the physical must constantly negotiate with the virtual. They bear their structures on the outside, visible and vulnerable. The exoskeleton is both literal and metaphorical: a hardened interface between the internal logic of painting and the external pressures of contemporary viewing. In making visible the architecture that supports and contains, Stokes asks us to reconsider what remains essential when everything can be reproduced, circulated and consumed as pure image.