Brian Groombridge

21 October to 4 December 2021


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The margins of the map creates a construction of definitive space. There is much that exists beyond the periphery of the real. What emerges in the space between determinacies?

In 1960 Yves Klein leapt from the second story of the Fontenay-aux-Roses rooftop. Meanwhile, below, as a gesture towards the impossible, Rotraut and companions held firmly to the edge of a taught tarpaulin. Klein’s iconic photo was doctored, but his aesthetics of lightness accelerated liberty into the realm of visual perception. One cannot escape gravity, but by creating the conditions for a temporary moment of flight, new degrees of freedom emerge.

Keith Jarrett’s famous Köln concert was a happenstance of contingencies, brought into being through the will of Vera Brandes, the confusion of the opera house, fatigue, and the dissonant keys on a rented grand piano. An equilibrium of occurrences through time and space resulted in a remarkable recording. 

The affecting tale of Henry Bemis concerns a man prevented from pursuing his love of reading his entire life. The intersection of chance occurrences poignantly changes everything.

Prototypes, lists, diagrams, and a letterpress are the notational means to signal unrealized possibility. This grid of improvisation asks questions in hopes of opening the leisure of a pause; where one might find a previously unexamined purview of potential.

Brian Groombridge’s other sculptures and wall works linger in the gallery with the buoyancy of a question mark. Each Case Study in the exhibition demonstrates a process of investigation.



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