Gravity

David Gill Gallery announces ‘Gravity’ – an exhibition of new work by Fredrikson Stallard (9th March to 9h April)

‘Gravity’ reveals a body of work that balances between the analogue and the digital, the controlled and the chaotic, the work offers a dialogue between the serene and the dynamic, the natural and synthetic as well as the hand-made and the industrial. Offering an emotional narrative on the process, conceptualisation and manufacture of each piece of work, Gravity reveals Fredrikson Stallard’s interest in the process of creation and destruction, alongside the controlled technology that ultimately enables its creation.

“The NEW is not the materials we are using, or the technology per se - what is new is seeing furniture and sculpture as the very same thing – the object has become itself – it does not need a function it can stand upon itself. Without technology we could not do what we do – but we are not driven by the computer.”
Fredrikson Stallard

Many of the pieces within ‘Gravity’, which comprises tables, a console and mirror, a light and for the first time, a series of accessories, encapsulate a sense of immediacy through the actions of shattering and smashing but held, as if by gravity, within a serene and suspended state. Following threads of ideas that have appeared in their work since their debut New York show of 2005 ‘Gloves for an Armless Venus’ as well as more recent shows such as ‘Crush’ and ‘Momentum’, ‘Gravity’ offers a path of consciousness that has developed as the design house has observed the interplay between digital technology and manufacturing techniques alongside their analogue creativity.

The duality and contradiction between chaos and control has achieved, within ‘Gravity’, a visual language that juxtaposes the calm with the disrupted, the fissures and fractures with the smooth and the stable - ‘Gravity’ is collection of work which sits on the edge between two worlds; pivoting between two states of play. Archaic forms are created but always under strict control.

Species I and Species II at once seem to take their inspiration from topography yet are made from the most cutting edge of technologies with the most classic of materials – dark red velvet. Gravity Table seems to float – its serene ice-like surface belies its fractured base. Beauty and destruction sit side-by-side – two parts of the same thing – but where the design house appears to have achieved perfect clarity through the chaos of experiment and the quest to control what is uncontrollable.

In many of the pieces where acrylic has been used, each piece becomes four dimensional, as the edges are blurred and the reaction to and manipulation of light ensures that the work is no longer an inanimate object but one that reacts more intimately to its own environment, offering yet further layers of narrative. As with ‘Crush’, the act of creation offers a level of excitement that is held within each piece which offers a sense of both time and place, forcing a reaction.

‘Gravity’ as a collection is effortless. Acrylic is used alone or combined with patinated steel – tactile red velvet is set against rigorous structures. As with Fredrikson Stallard’s past work, there is no added or superfluous decoration – every piece is paired down to the essential and fundamental elements. Form no longer follows function – form is form and the object is the only element that is of importance – the object and its relationship with the emotion that created it. Computer CADs are left to their ‘natural’ forms – un-manipulated, as though the digital form has been allowed to retain its analogue sensibilities.