Anthony Pearson

 

Arrangements – pairings of bronze sculptures and photographs


Flares – digital transmission to create an abstraction. They are concentric circular forms of light caused by a light leak in the artist’s camera.

Flare
Flare

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solarizations – silver gelatin prints, drawings on foil, the photographed. Solarization of the final photographic print “creates additional layer of procedural transmission, abstracting the image even further from its initial source” –

“trajectory from conceptual genesis to concrete formalism is the principal act of the work”


Tablet sculptures – original sculpture cast in clay and then cast in bronze. Clay is malleable, can be worked like a drawing to make marks in space. Casting the final result in bronze Pearson conversely engages a process associated with permanence and solidity


Transmissions – large “screens” of cut metal forms like drawings standing upright in space. From one predetermined frontal position the metal fragments align themselves and become like one of his small solarizations. When the viewer moves it dissolves again. Sculpture is now informing and creating an image rather than the other way round.

Transmission
Transmission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes on Pearson

Pearson’s work seems to be concerned with modernist tropes,. There are similarities to various modes of abstraction from the past, and he wants to explore visiting them again but arriving at his formal references by using techniques involving a certain degree of chance, repetition and application of mechanical processes. It’s interesting that he used to collect and sell on old vinyl records. There’s a nice sense of trawling through the past to find something that has been under-appreciated or forgotten, and giving it a chance to surface again and be seen by fresh eyes in a new context. The works deals in what seems to be opposing forces; handmade / mechanised, gestural / automated, random / ordered.

 

 

 

Liz Kotz piece on Pearson’s work  –    Liz Kotz on AP

 

Anthony Pearson delivering a college talk about his work.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYrbu_MLvGU]