Spherical Harmonics
Spherical Harmonics is about the strange power of the CGI image. It’s a fantasy under construction, full of digitally created memories, counterfeit physics and controlled accidents. A place where reality fails because it’s too perfect. Spherical Harmonics sits stylistically at a halfway point between the glossy product displays of Oxford Street and the workhouse construction of Soho’s post production scene.
Doppelgänger
When one spacecraft embarks on its journey, another is launched at the same time in a parallel reality. Alice, a solitary astronaut, is teleported to a distant planet, and so is her double. When Alice and her ship return, she assumes her mission has failed and she has somehow returned home; but she has, in fact, arrived at a world where everything is the reverse of what she once knew. Doppelgänger presents a nuanced and layered parable that powerfully addresses the slippery notion of objective truth, and the position of the ‘other’ in contemporary society.
Re-projection: Hoosac
Influenced by the utopian projects — and notable failures — of innovative artists and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, Frederick Kiesler, and Charles Eames, Tobias Putrih likens his works to experiments, or design prototypes. His use of cheap materials, including egg crates, cardboard, and plywood signify both a sense of potential and impending collapse. Many of the artist’s works reference the architecture and spectacle of the cinema: a space suspended between fantasy and reality, image and environment. With Re-projection: Hoosac Putrih distills the cinema to its most basic element: fishing line stretched across the gallery mimics the conical trajectory of a beam of light. A spotlight hits the strands of monofilament which in turn become a screen, reflecting an image in illuminated dots. Inspired by the Hoosac Tunnel just east of North Adams — a storied, engineering marvel that draws ghost-hunters to the area — Putrih’s tunnel is, likewise, both real and a representation, an optical trick that invites both wonder and investigation.