Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
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Jonathan Callan
- Additional Information -
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in New York of London artist Jonathan Callan.
Though Jonathan Callan's use of subjects and materials are many and varied they are united by process and duration; the pieces are meticulous and precise, displaying characteristics that seem more the result of organic processes. The books he presents seem infected, their covers and pages erupting as though eaten or attacked by fungal growth.
On closer inspection one sees that these eruptions are the result of patient destruction forcing maps, point by point, into and through the covers. Books are vials of information and authority, as well as objects. It is the relationship of disembodied knowledge to embodied experience and materiality that Callan is interested in.
In a floor-based installation 8 feet by 8 feet, Callan exploits the characteristic that the physicist Per Bak calls, 'self-organized criticality,' where white cement powder is carefully sieved over a prearranged bi-symmetrical template. The resulting 'dustscape' is a function of a kind of ordered disorder resembling both the design of a Persian carpet and the peaks and valleys of an Alpine landscape.
Jonathan Callan has recently shown at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, as well as at Hales Gallery in London, where he lives and works.
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