GEORGI TUSHEV
UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
AUGUST 6 - AUGUST 30, 2009
Opening reception: Thursday, August 6, from 6 to 9 pm
NOMA GALLERY is pleased to present Uncertainty Principle a collection of paintings and works on paper by Georgi Tushev. Tushev's work both examine and embody the brutal beauty of physical laws .
In his work, Tushev uses paint that reacts to magnetic fields along with magnets, gravity, oil and water, and paper or canvas. He then plays with the materials to allow the natural forces to create the final image. In fixing these phenomena onto paper or canvas, Tushev confronts the Uncertainty Principle; the interaction of the order of physical laws and the chaos that comes from the cracks in those laws; the conflict between complex patterns and disarray. The solution to this tension is in the poetry of these works: they are simply very compelling and beautiful.
"Georgi Tushev's series of oil paintings are not figurative depictions of strange attractors, but are instead a play on the concept. He applies pigments containing iron or cobalt to canvas in the presence of a magnetic field. The resulting three-dimensional structures reflect the contours of the field lines. In his artist statement, Tushev writes, The build-up of iron standing out like a punk haircut in my work is the result of chance. In other words, exact outcomes of experiments cannot be predicted, the best we can do is to predict the probability that any given outcome may occur. Ambiguously resembling petals, tentacles, blast marks or craters, Tushev's work evokes the statistical self-similarity that characterizes so many things in the natural world, as well as the enigmas of chance" Charlotte Mittnacht