Charles Sandison transports viewers into the fascinating world of the labyrinthine complications of language. Words and symbols dance, float, meet and mingle across the walls of the darkened gallery and the whole structure of the exhibition space. Sometimes aggressive, hasty and then slow and peaceful again, it seems as if the words have acquired a life and logic of their own.
Read MoreIn the middle of the kaleidoscopic swarms of words we feel as though we have landed in the middle of the mouth of thought itself, in which the words become the protagonists of a story about the origin of being. Their movements seem random at first, but on closer inspection, we discover that they possess an individual choreography that resembles a digital simulation of the systems of nature and civilisation, a poetic illustration of the binary code that forms their basis.
In a simple but eloquent way they reveal the extent to which our language and indeed our whole system of thought rest on primordial binary structures such as light and dark, good and evil, male and female, natural and artificial, open and closed, dead and alive. Projected against the wall, the ephemeral form in which they are presented again serves to underline the fleeting nature of thought and images, which can be perpetually reinvented and put together in an infinite number of ways.
His façade projection 'Proclamación Solemne' at the Grand Palais, Paris caused as much attention a his solo show 'Correspondances: Sandison – Monet' at the Musée d'Orsay Art contemporain, Paris (both 2008).
Recently his work 'The Blind Watchmaker' has been on view at the presentation of the Burger Collection in Berlin and he participated in the group show 'Embrace!' at the Denver Art Museum, Colorado, USA (both 2009). His façade projection 'Proclamación Solemne' at the Grand Palais, Paris caused as much attention a his solo show 'Correspondances: Sandison – Monet' at the Musée d'Orsay Art contemporain, Paris (both 2008). Sandison has participated in important international group exhibitions at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2004), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2004), Museum of Art, Lucerne, Switzerland (2005), and the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2006), among others. Most recently, his work was represented at the Shanghai Biennial 2006. Sandison has also had numerous solo exhibitions e.g. at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2004), the Centre pour l’image contemporain, Geneva, and the Fundación La Caixa, Palma Mallorca, Spain (both 2006).
Text courtesy Arndt Berlin
