Victoria Miro participates in The Armory Show (Booth 600) with a solo presentation of new and recent works by Conrad Shawcross.
Conrad Shawcross, RA, creates sculptures and installations that, imbued with an appearance of scientific rationality, explore subjects that lie on the borders of geometry and philosophy, physics and metaphysics. He has gained a global reputation for extending the possibilities of art in the public realm, with recent commissions including the Comcast Technology Center building, designed by Foster + Partners in Philadelphia, where Exploded Paradigm, 2018, occupies the lobby of the building, its complex mirrored surfaces enhancing the visitor’s experience of the surrounding architecture. At 18 metres tall, Exploded Paradigm is the artist’s largest Paradigm work to date. It forms part of the building’s permanent installation of artworks alongside a scrolling text work by Jenny Holzer. Paradigm, 2016, a permanent installation which marked the inauguration of The Francis Crick Institute in King’s Cross, is currently one of the tallest public sculptures in central London.
This presentation, which follows the artist’s first solo institutional exhibition in the United States, held at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in 2018, features new and recent examples from major bodies of work. The Paradigms are an ongoing exploration of the tetrahedron – geometrically a four-sided non-tessellating form and conceptually the symbol of an indivisible unit of matter. As a building block, the tetrahedron behaves as an irrational number, creating sequences that in theory, extend into infinity without repetition. The title of the works refers to the notion of the paradigm shift – a leap of imagination that jolts scientific enquiry forwards and collapses pre-existing notions of what is true – identified by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996). Examples on view include Paradigm Exploded, 2015, which, like the permanent commission in Philadelphia, creates a play of light across its mirrored surfaces, and Paradigm Slender 2 (Solid), 2017, a graceful column composed of weathered steel.
Additionally, there will be works on view by María Berrío, Secundino Hernández, Ilse D’Hollander, Chantal Joffe, Yayoi Kusama, Wangechi Mutu, Alice Neel, Celia Paul, Howardena Pindell, Tal R, Caroline Walker and Flora Yukhnovich.
Howardena Pindell in Conversation
Taking place at 2pm on Sunday 8 March 2020, Truth, Fiction, and Memory is an in-conversation event featuring the artist, and writer and editor Kimberly Drew.
