press release

Galerie Almine Rech are pleased to present the second solo show of UK artist Nathaniel Rackowe.

The title of the show 'pathfinding' draws on a system of computer coding designed to negotiate the most economic route between a series of points. It also puts forward the idea of tracking and locating, activities that suggest the continual presence of the artist within process of both idea and outcome.

Central to Rackowe's body of new works is the large-scale piece Black Shed (2008), a readymade garden shed cut into a series of horizontal slices. Each slice is articulated by a shaft of light emitted from the interior of the structure. The piercing intensity of this cast-out light is amplified by the acid yellow colour saturation of the interior space. Drawing on previous strands of work the piece WLP7 (2008) consists of two wall mounted doors hung against each other. Two unseen light sources cross fade between and behind the layered doors, creating a shifting optical outcome that moves between a coloured and a stark white light. Also shown is the work SP3 (For V Tatlin) (2008), a wall-based piece constructed from vertical lengths of scaffold. Configured according to Dan Flavin's Monument 1 (for V Tatlin) (1964) the work becomes an echo, replicating the neutrality of Flavin's white fluorescent lights. Here Rackowe enforces the bulbs' fragility by encasing them within scaffolding poles, reducing the light they emit to a minimal spill. Scaffold is a material common to the urban environment, acting as a structural support during construction and repair. As an object it is of equal consequence to both the original and the reproduced.

Having worked to examine the structural codes and material outcomes of Modernism, here in these new works Rackowe begins to explore and expose its mythologies.

Charles Danby

only in german

Nathaniel Rackowe
Pathfinding