Ed Templeton: The Cemetery of Reason

Professional skateboarder, graphic and video artist, painter, photographer and sculptor, Ed Templeton (1972) is no ordinary figure of contemporary art, who earned fame in America and Europe with a unique creative method and exhibition technique. Raised in a suburb of San Francisco, the artist is hard to categorize. Templeton’s exhibitions are vast installations, always site-specific, that comprise photos, drawings, paintings and sculptures – very sensitive responses to the world around him –, and that also include his personal commentaries. The artworks are of equal value as they enter into an interaction to form a whole, and the accompanying texts – anecdotes, musings, ideas – open further levels of meaning.

With The Cemetery of Reason, the artist talks about his own life, his family and friends, the people he meets in the city and whilst travelling as a professional skateboarder. If the inspiration is autobiographical, the work nonetheless goes beyond the personal, and as a lucid representation of the younger generation’s worldview and attitude, it concerns important social and political phenomena.