'cosmolology +1' by peter coffin
herald st, london, UK
on now until 20 february, 2011



installation view, herald st, london
'untitled (lines)'
2011
neon
all works courtesy of herald st, london


'cosmolology +1', an exhibition by american artist peter coffin at london's herald st gallery,
treats the question of knowledge, provoking attention to the disconnect that exists
between the physical world and our ways of understanding it.

named, essentially, for the study of the study of the universe, in its infinite mise en abyme,
the exhibition is composed of three works over two rooms:
a neon installation piece, a series of cloud photographs, and a living hanging plant.



installation view, herald st, london
'untitled (lines)'
2011
neon


the first room features an installation of seven lengths of neon,
each representative of one of the seven colours of the newtonian spectrum.
the light cast upon the room's floor and walls shifts with the movement of both the cords themselves
and that of visitors through the space, whose bodies interact with and obstruct certain colours relative to one another.



installation view, herald st, london
at left, the room containing 'untitled (lines)'; at center, one of the 'untitled (clouds)' pieces; at right, installation view of 'untitled' hanging plant


the second room is established as a traditional gallery, whose walls are hung
with five compositions of photographs of clouds, each rendered in bright colour.
it is in this space that the third piece presents itself: a plant cascading over a doorway.



installation view, herald st, london
exhibition wall featuring two works of 'untitled (clouds)'


the cloud images that coffin compiles in 'untitled (clouds)'
are actually adopted from the glass negatives of nineteenth-century photographs.
during this time period, the long exposures required for landscape photography registered the sky as a blank white;
thus photographers would keep stock glass negatives of clouds, which in the darkroom they would expose
over the landscape to generate a more realistic-looking image.



'untitled (clouds)'
2011
digital c-print
54.5 x 72 cm / 21.4 x 28.4 in framed



'untitled (clouds)'
2011
digital c-print
69.5 x 92.5 cm / 27.4 x 36.4 in framed


altogether, the exhibition examines our human ways of organizing, representing, and understanding the world.
'untitled (lines)', for instance, references the fact that our colour system is composed of seven colours
primarily because newton felt the number would echo the logic of having seven notes in a musical scale.

as maika pollack wrote of the exhibition, the fact 'that to render a realistic-seeming landscape photograph
necessitated the imagination and audacity to burn a sky with foraged clouds' provokes questions
regarding our perception of the real, our ways of interacting with the world, and the place of art.



untitled
2011
hanging plant
dimensions variable


looking forward, coffin notes that his cloud series is a precursor to a project
in which he plans to dye actual clouds with food colouring, using a crop duster plane.