Galleri Urbane welcomes new works by Peter Gail Borden for his fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. In Dimensional Iterations, the artist and architect furthers his ongoing exploration of spatial contexts, formal apprehensions, and experiments in materiality. In three series which he calls “chapters,” Borden plays with materials and takes varied approaches to essentialism and minimalism. Resin panels, sculptural objects, and works on paper enter into succinct dialogue.
“All of them deal with systems of representation and systems of perception. So, how we see versus how we think we see,” Borden says. “[Artworks are] realized thought, and thus intrinsically perceived intellectually. That intellectual perception implies a system of language, and thus engages a sense of wonder about what it is that is being seen.”
Each series uses color and structure to create space and satisfies a desire for type and variance. Deep-set, resin-cast panels are imbued with an object-like quality, although they are wall hangings. Radiant and precise color fields create restrained, geometrically delineated surfaces, which are exquisitely self-contained, yet allow the possibility that the viewer will complete their composition, as their glossy skin takes in and interacts with the environment. “There is a desire to eliminate the idea of the surface, but get depth,” Borden says.
Truly two-dimensional works — employing thick oil stick on watercolor paper — they nevertheless investigate texture and depth, allowing the mark of the hand to show through planes of flatness.
Meanwhile, sculptures of raw and painted structural lumber for the first time explore two distinct geometries — the cubic and the rectangular — in taut, modular iterations. These pieces are “arguably furniture-like: they could be a stool or a chair,” Borden says. “But they’re not really impregnated with that level of responsibility or functionality. They really are systems of color rationales, modular geometries, and type and variance within a system. But, I’m not offended if someone uses them as an end table. I’m okay with that as a thing. There’s something honest about the functionality of it.”
Exquisitely rigorous, and more than ever thoughtfully mixing the languages of two- and three-dimensionality, Dimensional Iterations highlights the work of an artist interested in bridging the principles of art and architecture. The works themselves act as a parallax, probing the most complex systems of dimension, color, and geometry. They also collaborate, forming families of parts and whole, like various parts of speech fitted into a complex grammar. Within them, Borden broaches the possibilities of entirely new ratios.
Moving through the field of objects in the gallery is a study in geometric systems, but also an experience that touches the hem of infinity, as Borden’s work asserts that within constraint lies a multiplicity of possibilities.
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- FREE!
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