Project Details
The Alchemists
From: 2010-04-28 - To: 2010-05-30
THE ALCHEMISTS
Gorka Mohamed, Meekyoung Shin, Vaishali Pathak, Juliette Losq, Jang-oh Hong
Private View: WEDNESDAY, 28th APRIL 2010, 7-9pm
Exhibition Dates: 28th APRIL - 30th MAY 2010
28th April – 30th May 2010
Edel Assanti Project Space, London
Bright Treasure Art Projects is pleased to present The Alchemists, a group show of new work from five international artists. This interdisciplinary exhibition offers an exploration of the meaning of alchemy in relation to visual art. With their culturally disparate perspectives and differing technical approaches, the artists challenge the definitions of this theme through sculpture, painting and installation.
Historically, alchemy was concerned with the manipulation of elemental matter to produce gold from base metals. Contemporary concepts of alchemy are now inextricably linked with notions of the instability of value, both in the physical world around us and in society’s definitions of objective worth. This exhibition posits the artist as the ultimate alchemist, able to turn base materials into objects of aesthetic beauty, desire and intrigue.
These ideas are developed over three floors of the Edel Assanti Project Space in three chapters: ‘Colourless Eureka’, ‘Translated Time Machine’, and ‘Viewfinder of Babel’. The first chapter ‘Colourless Eureka’ takes the form of an installation in the basement of the building, where Jang-oh Hong explores the potential of deploying transparent materials to achieve a process of inverse-alchemy in the study of disappearance. ‘Translated time machine’ begins with the building’s street front window display of Meekyoung Shin’s ‘translation-glass jar’, a series of exquisitely sculpted soap vases; the chapter continues on the second floor, with further works by Shin, as well as ethereal paintings, objects and installations by Juliette Losq and Vaishali Pathak. The third floor is given over to the ‘Viewfinder of Babel’, a series of paintings by Gorka Mohamed, whose compositions vacillate between humour and unease.
The transformation of matter and the evolution of ideas have become familiar in contemporary art as the physical and the conceptual jostle for independence and status in the mind of the viewer. The five artists in this exhibition pursue idiosyncratic forms of alchemy within their practices. Commonplace objects and traditional media are infused with a metaphysical aura, channelling the gaze of the onlooker into a series of explorations of harmonised understandings of the cosmos.
