b.1975 in Berlin, Germany.

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

In physics the notions of movement and energy are intrinsically linked. Much has been said about the use of “movement” and “energy” in painting and sculpture, with both concepts standing in as a metaphoric description of expressive gesture. The language of physics and materiality is injected into the dialogue about art generally without regard for specificity. This is, in some ways, the starting point for the 3D neon work I have created for URBIS. The installation consists of 10ft units of bent neon. Each unit was bent individually, and is connected with the others to form a three-dimensional drawing. The result has formal relations to Moholy-Nagy’s photographs of motion, Pollock’s paintings, and Marden’s brushwork, but the methodology of how the drawing is assembled resembles the tactics of Sol LeWitt.  The composition is completely stochastic and invites references to “movement” and “energy”. It actually takes these descriptions literally in that neon-tubes are nothing more than highways for electrons to de-ionize a noble gas and kick off photons. The drawing is made up of the movement and interaction of energy itself, and uses a formalism normally associated with those terms.

Part of my work is about the arrival of light into the eye and how your mind constitutes it into a generative, normative mode of what we call reality.  Once you start stretching your understanding of time and space and how they are put together, everything shifts. 

www.larissagoldston.com/artists/gandalfgavan/index.aspx

Images

Gandalf Gavan, Infinite Affinities, installation, P.S.1, Long Island City, NY.  Image courtesy of the artist and Larissa Goldston Gallery.