New Art Projects is delighted to present the first UK exhibition by sculptor Bill Albertini: Baroque-O-Vision Redux, a site-specific installation at the gallery.
Private view: Thursday, 3rd April.
The show will until the 24th May.
Albertini’s “Pipe Dream System” is a body of work he has been making since 2017. The series is based on an ever-growing catalogue of parts, which can be assembled into unique configurations that differ from space to space. The main rule that unites his installations is that all of his pre-fabricated components are modular and designed to be connected. Time and timing is also important to the work and this manifests itself in how his Pipe Dream System evolves through the linear “design” process of the individual components (which is somewhat slow paced and methodical) to the timing of the assembly of those components into the finished sculptures which tends to be a fast, intuitive process.
Albertini observes that he “tends to think of this system as a non-linear diary of my time in the studio. Some parts are almost functional in appearance and others are far more ambiguous, the “almost functional” aspect is important to me, I am interested in creating things that appear familiar and yet are not. My ‘Pipe Dream System’ is quite baroque which looks back to my earlier work from the late 1980s where I was interested in using decorative elements as a material much as one would choose stone or steel for their particular qualities.
It is the marriage of this baroque quality and contemporary installation that makes up his show at New Art Projects. All of the elements that make up the work suggest two possible functions, one practical, such as simply being a pipe, and one decorative that references the fanciful and opulent embellishments applied to early historic engineering and the style that spread across Europe at the end of the 17th century. Bill Albertini underlines this dichotomy as he uses computer generated modelling and 3D printing to create his modular components, however, the resulting assembled parts form wild sculptures that fit together to form other realities, which lie between the mechanical, the functional, the imaginary, and the organic.
Notes for Editors:
Albertini has been using computer technology to fashion his work since the early 1990s. He received his MFA from Yale University and studied in both Ireland and England as an undergraduate. He has shown extensively in New York, including at White Columns and Jack Tilton Gallery, as well as nationally and internationally. His work has been reviewed in major publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Brooklyn Rail.