As the Frieze Art Fair and its satellite fairs briefly turn London into the center of the global art world, the British artist Paul Fryer (b. 1963) is unveiling a major new two-part exhibition, "Let There Be More Light," sited both at the Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, Oct. 14-21, 2008, and Simon Dickinson Gallery, London, Oct. 15-31, 2008. The new exhibition boasts several major sculptures that treat the forces of modern science with a religious fervor, including a hyperrealist sculpture of Lucifer bound by high-power lines, a 47-foot-long facsimile of a V2 missile lovingly crafted in wood, and what seems to be a "star, captured and imprisoned in a bell jar."
Fryer’s wildcard sensibility can be traced to his childhood, which was marked by ostentatious wedding singing and notoriously dark poetry. In the 1980s he attended Jacob Kramer College in Leeds. He didn’t take a degree, but rather became an electropop singer and DJ, helping to launch several local art-based nightclubs. He came to London in 1996, working as a graphic designer and technical consultant for artists and galleries. In 2001 he collaborated with Damien Hirst, who he had met at art school, on Don’t Be So. . . (2001), a book with poetry by Fryer and images by Hirst.
During 2003-05, Fryer performed a critically acclaimed multimedia show titled Electronic Elvis and also worked as musical director for the Fendi Fashion House. He began to exhibit his sculptures and other works, hybrids of science and high craft, in group shows, and had his first solo exhibition, "Carpe Noctum," at London’s Trolley Gallery in 2005.
Damien Hirst was a patron of the exhibition, acquiring the aptly named high-voltage signature piece, Deus Ex Machina, an intricate weapon from the world of physics -- it emits streams of lightning -- developed with the help of Colin Dancer, an engineer and physicist who is Fryer’s frequent collaborator. Hirst also owns Fryer’s haunting Pieta (The Empire Never Ended) (2006), which is displayed at Hirst’s office on Wellbeck Street alongside a suitably atmospheric Francis Bacon work.
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