Martin Creed

Keith Tyson installations'

I absoulutely adore Keith Tysons' installations; he had two in 2007 ; Large Field Array, which was displayed in factory/ loft galleries; PaceWildstein in New York and De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands. 

(His website is also amazing).

t seems as if ‘Large Field Array’ mixes different models for describing the world. 

 

“Yes. Certain patterns and systems are laid out in the structure. You have the signs 

of the zodiac, chemical elements like sodium, helium, oxygen and so on and so forth. 

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto 

line up in a planetary strip. In one direction, you’ll find mathematical truths. In another 

direction it has material truths. One line follows the path of human life, another one 

the way of heat and entropy. These lines are of course arbitrary. It doesn’t matter if 

you know or if you don’t. It is like an abstract painting. Instead of asking how does 

yellow go next to blue, I am asking how one form can go next to another form as the 

consequence of these invisible forces. Scientifically speaking, a sculpture is an 

interference pattern of both laws of physics and quantum forces, but also of art 

history and other kinds of forces. Each one of the 300 pieces is the sum of all 

possible forces acting upon it. Each sculpture is basically the result from the things 

around it. Looking at them, you understand that they are partial. We are always 

looking for the original thing which of course there isn’t. There is just the world. There 

is no great truth in any of these sculptures. The great truth is that they are all 

interconnected. The way in which the art world will take an object and put it in 

isolation and say: there it is! - that is such a myth. I am trying to create a theatre 

where that is impossible. You cannot enter Large Field Array and control it. It is 

overwhelming. And it is actually a little bit terrifying. I want that feeling of terror when 

you walk through it. That there is too much to grasp.” 

 

Josiah McElheny @ White Cube, Hoxton Square

Island Universe

Upon entering the first floor space you are greeted with an explosion of five highly reflective, chrome-plated, aluminium spheres. There are roDs protruding off each sphere ending with lightbulbs some on with the filament inside and some without. It feels a bit like I am looking at design art, as they do represent chandeliers, at first glance it seems as though it should be in a trendy wine  bar.

However, they are a play on the Lobmeyr-designed chandeliers in New York's Met Opera house. There is also something distinctively scientific about them; so is it coincidence or influence that the design of the chandeliers and the discovery of the first data supporting the Big Bang both occured in 1965. 

McElheny has collaborated with a cosmologist; David Weinberg to create the scientifically correct sculptures as well as illustrations of the Big Bang theory.

The film on the second floor is one of the best video pieces I have seen in a long while... filmed in super 16mm at the Metropolitan Opera House NY each of the five sections depict the types of universes in the installation. The music and editing convey a rhythmn that shifts, freezes and develops in relation to the scientific speculations about other words.

Art that relates to Science and vice versa is always so fruitful and is definately a great partnership. It always inter-relates and McElhenys' installation and video is a romantic view, investigation into portraying a scientific theory of the big bang through a visual kaleidoscope.

I also saw some of his sculptures last year in The Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, Illinois along with artist Joshua Mosley.