Curated by James Putnam

Exhibition: 25th March – 12th May 2011

Maddox Arts is pleased to present Fascination, an exhibition featuring new work by Mat Chivers. The show comprises sculptures and drawings derived from the artist’s fascination for cloud-like and crystalline structures. Analogue and digital processes are brought together in Chivers’ work, presenting a tension between opposites. He employs the cloud as a metaphor for metamorphic processes reflecting the way in which we sense, filter, develop and understand the world that surrounds us.

Chiver’s dynamic two-part work ‘Syzygy’ epitomizes the themes explored in this exhibition. It is a 1.3-meter high intricately hand carved, cloud-like form in translucent white Alabaster facing a ‘crystalline’ element -a piece of Indian Black Granite- built using digital processes. This horizontally placed second element has been generated by having the alabaster form digitally scanned; this process results in a three-dimensional mesh, comprised of millions of triangles, which Chivers has then systematically reduced resulting in an object made of 54 triangles, which has been built by a 5-axis robotic milling machine. Untouched by the artist’s hands, this synthetic object represents as James Putnam claims ‘a subverted mirror copy of the upright hand carved sculpture’. [1]

By juxtaposing polar opposites the artist represents a tension between traditional methods of artistic production such as the use of chisel and stone in contrast with contemporary technological processes. Chivers’ fascination for cloud-like structures and crystalline elements is evoked through a psychological perception of reality in which materials, form and concepts are not only infused with vitality, but also brought into a realm of harmony and balance.

1 Quote from James Putnam essay catalogue, Fascination: p. 2