Necrocosmographica, Galerie Nicolas Silin
13 September - 27 October 2012
Necrocosmographica, Galerie Nicolas Silin
13 September - 27 October 2012
Ink on paper (six 50 hour inductive dot drawings), wooden plinths, video
House 44, Al Bastakiya, Dubai, UAE. In partnership with Dubai Culture, Tashkeel and Art Dubai, supported by the British Council
Tobias Collier, Gallery Laure Genillard
29th January – 1st April 2011
Host, Pianissimo Gallery
17 September - 6 November, 2010
For his second solo show with Pianissimo Gallery, artist Tobias Collier presents his latest body of work in sculpture, video and drawing installation under the title “Host”.
Pursuing his interest in art production as a research practice, and in particular influenced by the methodology outlined by Hungarian mathematician Imre Lakatos, this exhibition sees Collier developing the system of what he calls “cultural geometry”.
One central tenet of this theory is the “principle of mediocrity”, that is, the insistence in homogeneity or lack of elevated hierarchical position in the particular area of cultural terrain that one may inhabit. As such, Collier’s work constantly refers to the cosmic, or rather meta-galactic, whilst manifesting in the everyday. “Host” sees Collier investigate ideas as diverse as understanding the cosmic scale, conscious thought, evolution and the parasite-host relationship through the quotidian vehicles of chart drawing, puzzle solving, origami and other more everyday activities.
Necrodelic Reverie, Stephane Simoens Gallery
3 April - 6 May 2010
'All the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and…the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.' Bertrand Russell
The revelation of science that our universe, governed by the second law of thermodynamics, is ultimately fated to a cold quiet ‘heat death’ becomes an unavoidable issue for the work of London based artist Tobias Collier.
His response in his first solo show at Stephane Simoens Gallery is to propose the pursuit of necrodelic reverie. Small, yet hugely ornate, pointillist drawings are produced as a result of hours of ritualised practice. Like moments in an ongoing process, or records of a timeless activity, the end results are un-human, naturalised, nebulous star-fields or perhaps cloudscapes. In his sculpture references to collapsing or eroded structures, chemical reactions and combustions abound. Conscious cosmic thought entropically linked to the arrow of time, reconciled to universal destiny.
Morphospace, The Delfina Foundation
30 October - 13 November 2009
Artist talk
1 November 2009 13:00 – 14:00
Astronomy Centre, Royal Observatory Greenwich
Works shown in Morphospace were produced during Tobias Collier’s residency in Damascus, Syria (2009).
Systemica Corpus Cosmica, TER Caemer Meert Contemporary
14 November - 20 December 2008