RICHARD DUCKER: DARK MATTER
8 - 28 March 2013
dalla Rosa Gallery is proud to present Dark Matter, a solo exhibition of sculptures and works on paper by Richard Ducker. This new body of work is based on a specific vision of war, portrayed through delicate ink drawings and sculptures suggesting a post-conflict scenario.
The ink drawings come from a desire to find a means of politicising the Dark Matter sculptures I had been working on at the same time, as a way of confronting a horror within the contemporary. Where the sculptures explore an alienation from language through displacement, the ink drawings respond to images directly. Gleaned from the Internet, they are (news reel, mobile phone uploads) images of lingering smoke after explosions from current conflicts.
As Vilém Flusser states: The photographic image elevates the historical event to a 'trans-historical' level, taking it outside the flow of historical events. Google search amplifies this process, compressing time and flattening space. Rather than emulate this by represent horror with horror, the scale of the drawings are deliberately that of the postcard, reducing its sublime to pocket size. The digital image of convenience made analogue. (Richard Ducker, 2013)
The series of delicate drawings are confronted with shard-like dark sculptures that seem to draw all surrounding light to their jet-black core. Writing about Ducker's recent work Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck College) noted: “If his previous sculptures turned the detritus of consumer culture into monuments to our obsession with things, the new work, Dark Matter Flowers appears to quote a monochromatic tradition. However, on close inspection the black shards have just as much in common with the discarded props of a pre CGI sci-fi movie, when such concoctions had to make do as interstellar debris floating in deep space or the rough surface of a new planet.”
About the Artist
Richard Ducker has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, including: ICA (London); Kettles Yard (Cambridge); Serpentine Gallery (London); Royal Academy (Edinburgh); Mappin Gallery (Sheffield); The Yard Gallery (Nottingham); The Kitchen (New York); Flowers Central (London); Cell Project Space (London); Katherine E Nash Gallery (Minnesota, USA); Standpoint Gallery (London); Café Gallery (London); Anthony Reynolds Gallery (London).
In 2006 Ducker was founder and director of Fieldgate Gallery. The space was 10,000 square feet warehouse in Whitechapel, London, and over two and half years hosted 18 exhibitions. Since the space closed in 2008 he has continued to curate under the name of Fieldgate Gallery at a variety of different venues.