The gallery is pleased to present their first solo exhibition with London-based artist Matt Calderwood. Calderwood’s practice explores the latent physical potential of materials and subsequent objects.
The Lower Gallery’s physical centre point is one of Calderwood’s imposing rubber sculptures. Constructed from identical individual elements, the subsequent formation recalls a very certain minimalist aesthetic and the work of figures like Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris and Tony Smith. However, the physical potential of this structural form, seems to confuse any apparent certainty associated with Minimalism. The gallery’s floor is populated with three further sculptural objects, also composed from identical individual elements.
The sculptures in this exhibition only manifest as complete objects through the sum of their individual elements. For example, the plywood objects are held only by the weight of their elements, as determined by their specific compositional arrangement. Subsequently, this body of work evokes a lucid observation upon totality and unison.
The large-scale works on paper are extensions of the sculptures; quite literally, the artist takes the single recurring element of each sculpture and manipulates them as printing blocks. The blackness of this printing process is quite deliberately left visible under the wash of white gloss. Ostensibly, there is an inversion of the process of production taking place here. The use of the sculpture to obtain these works on paper - which themselves are sculptural entities in this context – is a unique development of the sculpture as a singular object. This extension of the linear and formal qualities of the initial sculptural object is a defining feature of the exhibition, generating a complete physical aesthetic. Indeed, the exhibition’s title ‘Full-Scale’ is a reference to the fundamentally important role of scale within the exhibition, particularly the symmetry of scale from physical element to image.
The work in the exhibition expands the artist’s diverse relationship with object and material. There is something vigorous yet highly measured about Calderwood’s practice, consequently the results are organic and complex.
