Exhibition
Will Nash - ELEMENT
19 May 2016 – 30 Jun 2016
Address
- 20 Arlington Way
- Islington
- London
- EC1R 1UY
- United Kingdom
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.” - Igor Stravinsky
About
William Benington Gallery is excited to announce Element, the first solo exhibition by Will Nash at the gallery.
At the centre of Will Nash’s practice is a concern with form, structure and quantity. His sculptures and installations are the result of ongoing explorations of mathematical forms and the relationships they have with one another. His different bodies of work fall into families of these forms that are connected by a particular geometry, repeating sequences of planes and angles to create similar variations on a theme.
The works in Element take as their starting point the Diamond Cubic; a repeated pattern of eight atoms that can be adopted by carbon based elements, and the rhomboid crystal structures they form as they solidify. Each sculpture in the show corresponds with the lines laid down by the Diamond Cubic, they all consist of a specific set of relationships between angles, lengths and vectors.
To create these specific forms, Nash works through a process of subtraction, or removal of imagined mass. Envisaging the Diamond Cubic as a grid, extending out from the sculptures flowing over and through the walls and floors of the gallery, he then works backwards – in much the same way as a stone carver – to reveal the shape of the sculpture inside. Each artwork is therefore in essence cut out from an endless grid, which is revealed by a series of steps – following, and sometimes breaking his own set of rules.
These complex, highly ordered and elegant sculptures are the artist’s attempt to explore, and wonder at how the world that surrounds us is put together.
