David Rickard: A Bag of Atoms
balzer projects presents David Rickard’s first solo show in Switzerland, entitled “A bag of Atoms”.
David Rickard (*1975 New Zealand) lives and works in London. Through a process-based practice his works investigate the inherent material properties of our surrounding environment and the spatial relationships between people, objects and architecture.
The phrase “A bag of Atoms” may refer to an incredibly small bag somehow containing a discrete number of atoms, or perhaps it is the materiality of the bag itself, being formed of several billion atoms. This interpretive slippage forms the nucleus of the exhibition and reveals the fluidity of our perspective in relation to the physical materiality and spatial interrelationships of everyday objects.
The exhibition includes several of Rickard’s recent installations that will occupy the entire gallery and beyond. The expansive installation ’36 Line describing a truncated cone – obliquely’ spreads through all of the gallery rooms, including the kitchen and public entrance as it traces its truncation down the center of the earth over 6000km below. Further works with an international reach include ‘We are all Astronauts’ which documents a single installation that connects specific sites within Mozambique, Brazil, Australia and French Polynesia and the very recent film ‘Vertical Horizon’ made in New Zealand and Spain.
In contrast to the installations that expand across continents are several more intimate works, such as ‘Post Revolution’ and ’57 grams hung drawn and quartered’ both of which continue Rickard’s fascination with the physical properties of our everyday environment. These small wall mounted pieces pick apart the temporal and physical properties of materials such as aluminum and bronze. As the title of the exhibition suggests, ‘A bag of Atoms’ may refer to the physicality and concepts within each one of the works shown at balzer projects, or the exhibition as a whole, or even the collective global bag of atoms of which we all form a part.
