Troika, Tobias Putrih, Larry Bell
Reverse Order
Until June 27, 2015
Vernissage for Troika’s Polar Spectrum: Thursday, June 18, 6–8pm
Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie
Malzgasse 20
4052 Basel
Switzerland
Hours (during Art Basel): Wednesday–Friday 1–6pm,
Saturday 11–4pm, and by appointment
T +41 61 271 7183
M +41 79 392 7234
On June 15 Troika’s sculpture Polar Spectrum completes the exhibition Reverse Order at Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie in Basel. For the first five weeks of the exhibition Reverse Order the viewer had to imagine Troika’s work within the space: an apt case of happenstance that the mental image of an absent sculpture was at the heart of a show uniting artists that make ideas manifest, each playing with the tangible and the visible.
With Polar Spectrum (2015) London-based collective Troika (Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastien Noel) consider how two forms can co-exist even if one would appear to be the polar opposite of the other. When the viewer finds the right point at either end of the large, suspended work they can see either a square within a circle or a circle within a square. These impressions are fleeting. Though the viewer cannot overlook its large volume, from the spots where the shapes are evident, it momentarily becomes a flat form at the periphery of the viewer’s sight that frames the view inside. Equally, Larry Bell’s sculpture Cube 1 (2008) works with concurrence, though the American artist’s study is primarily of light. His work in Reverse Order hovers above a clear plinth; as the viewer moves around it the material holds, reflects or transmits light.
If the C Drawings from Tobias Putrih seem at first unambiguous in comparison, they do not, however, reveal their logic. Each is a collection of countless ink marks on paper, building up to a loose sphere form. The drawing series has evolved over years, initially recognisably based on the geodesic form of Buckminster Fuller’s utopian Cloud Nine domes. Now, as with the clouds or steam or swarms they resemble, where a pattern emerges, it quickly dissolves. The organic, irregular forms of Troika’s drawings made by burning paper with an electric charge such as Cartography of Control (2014) and Path of Least Resistance (2014) emerge from their play with controlling processes that are, inherently, beyond control. The singed lines are burnt through paper as a current tries to overcome the material’s resistance. As it strives to close the circuit it follows numerous false leads as well as successful routes.
Different strategies inform and define these works. Bell is renowned for his focus on the possibilities offered by frameworks such as a cube or what he calls a “standing wall,” and has explored the effects of minute variations of his media within these. Nonetheless, his approach is characterised as intuitive and improvised. Troika frequently define tight parameters for their works before deliberately introducing an element that cannot be controlled. They thus discover the limits of what can be designed in works with soot or electric current. At what point do they exceed that which can be predicted? Tobias Putrih famously started and dropped out of a degree in physics but returns repeatedly to scientific methods. Borrowing a scientific approach, hypothesis, experiment and outcomes are fruitful ways of planning and enacting his works, from drawings to large built structures. Another strategy is the reconstruction of other scientists’ and designers’ forms anew within an art context. Unwilling to embrace one context at the expense of the other, these practices are a means to make and build while eliding the status of a completed artwork.
Reverse Order focuses on unstable territories, grasping transitory moments. Seen in Putrih’s ongoing work with cinemas, ephemerality is found likewise in Bell’s cube—a precisely delineated but nonetheless ever-changing thing—and Troika’s sculpture that generates just a glimpse of visual abstraction, or their works on paper crystallising a charge or fixing smoky traces. Putrih has cited the alchemist as an enviable figure from history, one who could combine a belief in the mystical or spiritual with rational scientific endeavour. Perhaps it is now the role of the artist to reunite these positions, to harness science and technology without losing a sense of freedom nor wonder.
From a longer text by Aoife Rosenmeyer
For all inquiries please contact Anne Mosseri-Marlio
anne [at] annemoma.com / M +41 79 392 7234
