At the centre of Toren’s last exhibition at the gallery stood Deus Ex Machina an old, injured wooden clothes
horse assisted in maintaining some upright dignity through the insertion of an elaborate steel ‘crutch’. A white
cotton towel draped over its fractured frame testified to its original function and fitness of purpose. While
retaining its role as a drying rack it occupied new territory as an eccentric, complex sculptural form. As with
all Toren’s work, the material and purpose of an object is represented
to richly expose its potential for
further meaning. The current exhibition includes the very same Deus Ex Machina as a prelude to the discovery
of a family of variations on the theme. These are very strange and wonderful objects, their stepped form, half
proud and erect, half collapsed, clad in a thick, newspaper pulped papiermache,
rendered homogenous and
monumental, absurd but proud. Like archaeological artefacts dragged out of history, they reprise their function
as bearers of cotton towels, pink and white, while engaging in a newly discovered formal conversation.
Over three hundred arrows, printed or stencilled on packing case cardboard, form two ordered assemblages on
the walls of each gallery space. All pointing upwards moving
in the right direction these
are the symbols
deployed on boxes to tell you, simply, which way up. Toren here celebrates the curious variety of these
basic indicators, isolates them, fakes them, prints them and organises a riot of verticality, two flights of fancy
that richly and perfectly express the potential of their form and function.
Amikam Toren held his first public exhibition in London at the ICA in 1974. That exhibition was the first
of many that have had a profound influence on generations of artists in this country. He has had solo
exhibitions in many of the major national venues including shows at the Serpentine Gallery, Ikon Gallery, and
Arnolfini. His work has featured in the Venice Biennale and in public exhibitions in Switzerland, France, the
USA, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel. This year he will show at the Guangzhou Biennale in
China and a major new video work will be included in the London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery in July.
Toren has been represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery since 1984.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND IMAGES, PLEASE CONTACT DANIEL DAVIS AT THE GALLERY
EMAIL: DANIEL@ANTHONYREYNOLDS.COM TEL +44 20 7439 2201 FAX +44 20 7 439 1869