Inversion

Tom Ellis

04.02.05 - 12.03.05

Private View: Friday 18 March, 6.00-8.00 pm

1. Inversion is, in a sense, half a sculpture.

2. It is also a rectangular chipboard box running the length of the gallery and supported off the floor on a series of evenly spaced 1litre paint tins.

3. From above strip lights, of the kind that might be found glowing concealed below a row of kitchen units, can be seen inverted in the recessed interior surface of the box.

4. It recreates the hypothesised reflection found in the sort of structure, half-filled with water and under lit from above, that one might find gracing the paved open spaces of nearby corporate London.

5. This work is a visual fossil.

6. What happens beyond the point of illusion (a point which could also be viewed as the point of failure) is made explicit by removing the top section to leave only the reflected element.

7. What happens when an illusion is exceeded?

8. Inversion takes the ordered, geometric logic of the optical world (in this case reflection) and, through a practical and physical process of reconstruction, pushes that logic beyond the point of phenomena/illusion into matter.

This is Tom Ellis' first show at Platform. He has recently exhibited at Zoo Art Fair (Jeffrey Charles Gallery and Flaca), MOT, T1+2 Artspace, Kontainer Gallery (Los Angeles), Percy Miller Gallery, Martinez Gallery (New York) and Jeffrey Charles Gallery. He has a forthcoming solo show at Kontainer Gallery, LA in autumn 2005.