ART CITIES:N.York-Studio Drift
Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta founded Studio Drift in 2007. With a multi-disciplinary team of 64, they work on experiential sculptures, installations and performances. DRIFT manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology in order to learn from the Earth’s underlying mechanisms and to re-establish our connection to it.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive
Studio Drift’s solo exhibition at Pace Gallery, features a single large-scale sculpture titled “Ego”. The work, taking the form of a shapeshifting block, is composed of hair-thin black nylon and handwoven in the Netherlands by DRIFT themselves. Tailored to the seventh-floor space, the work transforms the gallery into a thought-provoking environment in constant flux. It will be accompanied by a Pace Live event with musician and singer-songwriter Lee Ranaldo, of Sonic Youth, on 12/3 at 19:00. “Ego” is a massive woven block, made of more than 16km of hair-thin Japanese fluorocarbon, controlled by motors, allowing the artists to animate and choreograph it. There has never been a block this size woven before, therefore the artists created their own weaving loom. Softwares and algorithms were developed, allowing the artists to animate and choreograph it as puppeteers. The intricate network of threads collectively rises, falls, expands and contracts, transforming between natural and non-natural states that recall synthetic structures as well as the micro-organisms and material substance that make up all life. As the form softly moves through the air like a spider web in nature, its black nylon threads come together and apart, emerging into and out of vision to create a perceptual phenomenon that reflects the internal structures of things unseen. “Ego” was originally developed in co-production with the Dutch Travel Opera house (Nederlandse Reisopera) for Claudio Monteverdi’s Opera “L’Orfeo” (1608), which premiered in January 2020. The world’s oldest-known opera, it tells the story Orfeo, whose reality unravels at the death of his wife Euridice. DRIFT’s work moved and shifted based on the themes of the play, particularly of Orfeo’s inner state, drawing parallels to the human condition as a whole. Together with director Monique Wagemakers and choreographer Nanine Linning, DRIFT transformed the opera into a technological cutting-edge total work of art. The block shape of “Ego” is a motif the artists have explored over the last decade, particularly in works such as their “Materialism” series, in which they reduced objects, such as a bicycle, down to their distinct materials and arranged them in minimalist compositions and “Drifter” (2017 an installation consisting of one floating concrete block (4 x 2 x 2 meters). The sculpture floats and moves at slow speed on a controlled three-dimensional path. With great accuracy, it creates a performance in its space.This concrete monolith represents a basic building unit, the primary element by which human built environment is constructed. On its own the concrete block is nothing, lost in space and time without reference to anything; it is always searching to be part of something bigger. “Drifter” wants to make people feel that without context they are lost. Without context, the object feels alien, divorced from its source. Moreover, Drifter shows how unknown the world and its mechanisms still are to mankind and emphasises the urge to expand our horizon and evolve in time. “Drifter” also refers to Thomas More’s book “Utopia” (1516). This novel mentioned concrete for the first time. Back then, concrete was ‘just’ a science fiction idea which centuries later became the foundation of our society.
Info: Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, New York, Duration: 3-14/3/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com
