Exhibitions
Paul Fryer: Let There Be More Light
Also Showing during Freize Art Week at
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
1 Marylebone Road
London NW1 4GD
(opposite Great Portland Street Underground)
15-21 October
Wednesday-Tuesday 10AM - 7PM
October 15 - 31, 2008
London - 58 Jermyn Street
Paul Fryer
LET THERE BE MORE LIGHT
14-31 October 2008
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science."
Albert Einstein
"Sometimes I am trying to access and shed light on another less visible world… I would like to open the door to that other dimension, and to reveal the things that I see there." Paul Fryer
Paul Fryer is playing God. And the church of Holy Trinity Marylebone will become the setting for the artist's most significant solo exhibition to date, a giant cabinet of curiosities where science, religion and art collide.
On entering the church, we see a child-sized, winged human figure, convulsed on the altar steps. On closer inspection we see that he is a waxen image of Lucifer (Morning Star), caught fast in a web of telegraph wires: a symbol of frail humanity, trapped in a terrible web of his own making. The work references Fryer's earlier Martyr (2007), a poetic memorial to the first victim of the electromechanical revolution, a lineman who was accidentally killed by falling onto wires on Broadway in 1889. His public electrocution paved the way for the introduction of the electric chair in the US.
At 47' long, Time We Left This World Today almost fills the nave. It is a facsimile of the V2 Missile, the first rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere, clinker-built from highly-polished wood, now more rocket-ship than weapon, preparing for a fantastic voyage. Upstairs, eleven dodecahedral Telstar communication satellites are lined up, stretching the length of the gallery room; each is made from a different sequence of exotic woods wonderfully figured in a virtuoso display of craftsmanship. In the artist's vision the milestone achievements of technological history and science are rendered impotent, yet take on a new and wondrous aesthetic.
Elsewhere Fryer 'paints' more landmark moments in wood marquetry: House Triptych depicts stages in the destruction of a clapboard house by a nuclear explosion; Edgerton Triptych shows an atom bomb nanoseconds after detonation, both events impossible to see under normal circumstances. In the Fryer universe time is stretched and truncated and the invisible is made visible. He delights in these revelations: "It's about showing things that people don't normally see. Electricity stays in the plug…it's designed to be invisible, because people don't want to be electrocuted… and maybe they don't really want to see the rays from space that travel through our bodies because it's frightening…" says Fryer. "But danger aside, the actual exploration of things, and the wonder of discovery…that's what really excites me."
To this end, Fryer frequently collaborates with engineer/physicist Colin Dancer, making natural phenomena come to life at the flick of a switch. Starlight, cosmic rays, electromagnetic forces, soundwaves: all appear to order. It's a subjective reality, but a very convincing one. Key to the impact is beauty: these moments of scientific wonder are both beautiful and frightening and all the more compelling for that.
In a separate room stands Revelation, a delicate architectural construction of glass and aluminium, which actually shows the paths of cosmic rays in real time as they descend from outer space. These light-speed travelers, from celestial origins 200,000 years away, appear as flashes of lightning, crackling through a series of plates in a Helium-Neon atmosphere. We see them for a just a moment before they continue on their endless journey, caught as we are in our own instant and coordinate in time and space.
Back in the main hall two 5m high, fully-functioning, aluminum Tuning Forks loom over the visitor, evoking a reverence for a faith not yet discovered, uncanny icons of a strange future religion.
Their deep resonance vibrates through the visitor's body at a reassuring (or disconcerting)
72 Hertz.
Nearby at Dickinson, the partner venue for this exhibition, a star, captured and imprisoned in a bell jar, glows forlornly. A miniature Aurora Borealis shimmers, tantalizingly close, in a box. Next door the three-movement work Demon (for Laplace) sees waxwork devils squatting atop the ultimate architectural achievement, the cantilevered staircase. Each is depicted as a carpenter, developing his own idiosyncratic stairway to heaven. None of them seem to have got very far. But it doesn't seem to have stopped them from trying.
For further information please contact Sarah or Theresa at Theresa Simon & Partners
sarah@theresasimon.com 020 7734 4800
For images please see www.theresasimon.com/press Enter name and email to access the downloads and select Paul Fryer from the drop-down menu.
Notes to editors
Venues Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, Marylebone Road, London NW1 11am – 7pm
Simon Dickinson, 58 Jermyn Street, London SW1 10am – 5pm
Contacts www.allvisualarts.org 020 7209 5670; simondickinson.com 020 7499 0722
Entry FREE
Nearest tube Holy Trinity Church, Great Portland Street
Dickinson, Green Park / Piccadilly
Holy Trinity is a former Anglican church, built in 1828 by Sir John Soane. The church was deconsecrated in the 1930s.
Paul Fryer – short biography
Paul Fryer studied art briefly at the Leeds College Of Art in the 1980s but instead of taking the degree, chose to be an electropop singer, recording several albums and singles. In the early 90s he graduated in the unlikely profession of transvestite DJ and was instrumental in the creation of the widely acclaimed Kit Kat Club and Vague, art-based clubs in Leeds. During this time he was also a prolific designer of underground ephemera for the dance scene, and produced many dance records for release.
It will be apparent that Paul Fryer has undergone several metamorphoses in his creative life: on moving to London in 1996, he designed books and other printed material for galleries, fashion houses and record labels and worked as technical consultant for a number of artists. His book of poetry, Don't Be So...,, illustrated by Damien Hirst, was published by Trolley Books in 2001.
His critically acclaimed multimedia show Electronic Elvis was successfully performed at several London venues in 2003 and 2005 and was released on vinyl and then reprised at the Glastonbury music festival. In the same year he left the Italian fashion house Fendi, after a five-year period as musical director, where he had been employed recording and coordinating soundtracks for the runway shows. Since 2005 he has devoted his time and energy exclusively to the making of art, a development that he regards as the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition. Paul Fryer lives and works in London and Derbyshire, splitting his time between his studio in Erith and his home on the edge of Sherwood Forest. A book of his work, Radiations, has just been published by Other Criteria.
Solo shows: Carpe Noctum, Trolley Gallery, 2005; Petit Mal, Masonic Temple (in association with Kristy Stubbs Gallery), 2006; Radiations, Julius Werner, Berlin, 2006; Potential & Ground, Manchester Square Fire Station, 2007. Group shows: Lead By The Nose, Livestock Market, 1996; The Quick And The Dead, Leeds City Art Gallery, 1998; Sleight of Hand, Transposition, Curtain Rd 1999; 2001 A Space Oddity, James Birch, A22 Gallery 2001; The Courtauld Collection Show 2002; The BBC4 Launch, Old Saatchi Gallery, 2002; The Ark, T1+2, 2005; New Gothic, Tate Britain February 2006, Young And British, Galerie Mitterand Paris 2007; Reconstruction 2, Sudeley Castle 2007; The Tempest, Venice Biennale, 2007; You Dig The Tunnel…, White Cube, London 2008.
Download PDF (93 K)
LET THERE BE MORE LIGHT
14-31 October 2008
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science."
Albert Einstein
"Sometimes I am trying to access and shed light on another less visible world… I would like to open the door to that other dimension, and to reveal the things that I see there." Paul Fryer
Paul Fryer is playing God. And the church of Holy Trinity Marylebone will become the setting for the artist's most significant solo exhibition to date, a giant cabinet of curiosities where science, religion and art collide.
On entering the church, we see a child-sized, winged human figure, convulsed on the altar steps. On closer inspection we see that he is a waxen image of Lucifer (Morning Star), caught fast in a web of telegraph wires: a symbol of frail humanity, trapped in a terrible web of his own making. The work references Fryer's earlier Martyr (2007), a poetic memorial to the first victim of the electromechanical revolution, a lineman who was accidentally killed by falling onto wires on Broadway in 1889. His public electrocution paved the way for the introduction of the electric chair in the US.
At 47' long, Time We Left This World Today almost fills the nave. It is a facsimile of the V2 Missile, the first rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere, clinker-built from highly-polished wood, now more rocket-ship than weapon, preparing for a fantastic voyage. Upstairs, eleven dodecahedral Telstar communication satellites are lined up, stretching the length of the gallery room; each is made from a different sequence of exotic woods wonderfully figured in a virtuoso display of craftsmanship. In the artist's vision the milestone achievements of technological history and science are rendered impotent, yet take on a new and wondrous aesthetic.
Elsewhere Fryer 'paints' more landmark moments in wood marquetry: House Triptych depicts stages in the destruction of a clapboard house by a nuclear explosion; Edgerton Triptych shows an atom bomb nanoseconds after detonation, both events impossible to see under normal circumstances. In the Fryer universe time is stretched and truncated and the invisible is made visible. He delights in these revelations: "It's about showing things that people don't normally see. Electricity stays in the plug…it's designed to be invisible, because people don't want to be electrocuted… and maybe they don't really want to see the rays from space that travel through our bodies because it's frightening…" says Fryer. "But danger aside, the actual exploration of things, and the wonder of discovery…that's what really excites me."
To this end, Fryer frequently collaborates with engineer/physicist Colin Dancer, making natural phenomena come to life at the flick of a switch. Starlight, cosmic rays, electromagnetic forces, soundwaves: all appear to order. It's a subjective reality, but a very convincing one. Key to the impact is beauty: these moments of scientific wonder are both beautiful and frightening and all the more compelling for that.
In a separate room stands Revelation, a delicate architectural construction of glass and aluminium, which actually shows the paths of cosmic rays in real time as they descend from outer space. These light-speed travelers, from celestial origins 200,000 years away, appear as flashes of lightning, crackling through a series of plates in a Helium-Neon atmosphere. We see them for a just a moment before they continue on their endless journey, caught as we are in our own instant and coordinate in time and space.
Back in the main hall two 5m high, fully-functioning, aluminum Tuning Forks loom over the visitor, evoking a reverence for a faith not yet discovered, uncanny icons of a strange future religion.
Their deep resonance vibrates through the visitor's body at a reassuring (or disconcerting)
72 Hertz.
Nearby at Dickinson, the partner venue for this exhibition, a star, captured and imprisoned in a bell jar, glows forlornly. A miniature Aurora Borealis shimmers, tantalizingly close, in a box. Next door the three-movement work Demon (for Laplace) sees waxwork devils squatting atop the ultimate architectural achievement, the cantilevered staircase. Each is depicted as a carpenter, developing his own idiosyncratic stairway to heaven. None of them seem to have got very far. But it doesn't seem to have stopped them from trying.
For further information please contact Sarah or Theresa at Theresa Simon & Partners
sarah@theresasimon.com 020 7734 4800
For images please see www.theresasimon.com/press Enter name and email to access the downloads and select Paul Fryer from the drop-down menu.
Notes to editors
Venues Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, Marylebone Road, London NW1 11am – 7pm
Simon Dickinson, 58 Jermyn Street, London SW1 10am – 5pm
Contacts www.allvisualarts.org 020 7209 5670; simondickinson.com 020 7499 0722
Entry FREE
Nearest tube Holy Trinity Church, Great Portland Street
Dickinson, Green Park / Piccadilly
Holy Trinity is a former Anglican church, built in 1828 by Sir John Soane. The church was deconsecrated in the 1930s.
Paul Fryer – short biography
Paul Fryer studied art briefly at the Leeds College Of Art in the 1980s but instead of taking the degree, chose to be an electropop singer, recording several albums and singles. In the early 90s he graduated in the unlikely profession of transvestite DJ and was instrumental in the creation of the widely acclaimed Kit Kat Club and Vague, art-based clubs in Leeds. During this time he was also a prolific designer of underground ephemera for the dance scene, and produced many dance records for release.
It will be apparent that Paul Fryer has undergone several metamorphoses in his creative life: on moving to London in 1996, he designed books and other printed material for galleries, fashion houses and record labels and worked as technical consultant for a number of artists. His book of poetry, Don't Be So...,, illustrated by Damien Hirst, was published by Trolley Books in 2001.
His critically acclaimed multimedia show Electronic Elvis was successfully performed at several London venues in 2003 and 2005 and was released on vinyl and then reprised at the Glastonbury music festival. In the same year he left the Italian fashion house Fendi, after a five-year period as musical director, where he had been employed recording and coordinating soundtracks for the runway shows. Since 2005 he has devoted his time and energy exclusively to the making of art, a development that he regards as the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition. Paul Fryer lives and works in London and Derbyshire, splitting his time between his studio in Erith and his home on the edge of Sherwood Forest. A book of his work, Radiations, has just been published by Other Criteria.
Solo shows: Carpe Noctum, Trolley Gallery, 2005; Petit Mal, Masonic Temple (in association with Kristy Stubbs Gallery), 2006; Radiations, Julius Werner, Berlin, 2006; Potential & Ground, Manchester Square Fire Station, 2007. Group shows: Lead By The Nose, Livestock Market, 1996; The Quick And The Dead, Leeds City Art Gallery, 1998; Sleight of Hand, Transposition, Curtain Rd 1999; 2001 A Space Oddity, James Birch, A22 Gallery 2001; The Courtauld Collection Show 2002; The BBC4 Launch, Old Saatchi Gallery, 2002; The Ark, T1+2, 2005; New Gothic, Tate Britain February 2006, Young And British, Galerie Mitterand Paris 2007; Reconstruction 2, Sudeley Castle 2007; The Tempest, Venice Biennale, 2007; You Dig The Tunnel…, White Cube, London 2008.
Download PDF (93 K)