P E T R O C S E S T I

Petroc Sesti is a British artist born in London in 1973 and educated at Chelsea College of Art, he lives and works in London and shows internationally.

Recent exhibitions include:Vanishing Point, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2008), and Space-Time, The KistefosMuseum, Norway (Permanent Collection 2007), Turbulence, The Louis Vuitton foundation, Paris 2012.

Currently showing: Theatre of the World, M.O.N.A. Museum, AustraliaPower Station of Art, New Shanghai Museum of Contemporary ArtTurbulences 2, Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, BrusselsRepresenting the UK at the 9th Shanghai Biennale

Petroc Sesti is currently working on a large commission for the permanent collection of the QatarFoundation HQ, Doha UAE.

The work of British artist Petroc Sesti straddles the boundaries of art and science with an enchantinghint of alchemy. The vortex within his work hypnotizes and attracts the viewer by the ever-changing spiral motion of its air core and by inversing the perspectives around it. The result is a complex yet meditative sculpture of a rare pure aesthetics.

Presenting sculptures and paintings in constant, but variable motion; both static and fluid, dynamicand stable. From urban multi-ton sculptures that liquify their environment to delicate wax forms, they are fluid contortions of energy, movement and optical view.

The catalogue of forms is endless…When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.” Italo Calvino

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FLUID STATES:

Literal FormTurbulences, Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris 2012

Event Horizon Installation, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago 2007

Vanishing Point (2008)Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

“If one were to imagine the work surrounded by

modern linear architecture, it would function

like a five tonne chameleon warping the surrounding linear

geometry into an optical display of complex curvature.” - Petroc Sesti

Commission for Qatar Foundation HQ, opens July 2013

Qi, Proposal for Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013

Elan Vital (2012)New Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art Unique 3m x 2m Bell Jar in aerospace polymer

Elan Vital, 10 Chancery Lane GalleryHong Kong Art Fair, China (2012)

Elan Vital (2012)New Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art

ReConStRuCtIon #1 At SudeLey CAStLe 2007These images document the installation and construction of a large optic bell jar shaped artwork on thegrounds of Sudeley Castle in 2007.

Created for Reconstruction #1 at Sudeley Castle Sesti’s work Space-Time (2006) is a large fifteen-foot glass bell jar filled with optic fluid. It is a five-ton sculpture with a whirlpool at its center and a computer-controlled turbine concealed in its base. A smaller work, Event Horizon (2005) references the rim of a black hole, the horizon beyond which nothing is visible, and from which not even a particle of light can escape.Brooke McGowen talks to Petroc Sesti about these works.

BM: How did you conceive of these works? What were your greatest inspirations/influences?

PS: A desire for movement and unpredictability. I got restless completing sculptures solely as static and motionlessartifacts. It was a natural progression, all my work had to do with stretching, bending, liquefying and resettingmediums like plaster, wax, resin and metals… In other words handling fluid states. I simply chose to interpret ‘fluid’,not just as a liquid, but as a vehicle through which to free myself of a static representation of movement.

BM: Space through the light of the star, blinking or otherwise, becomes a measurement of time. How does time,so clearly evidenced as arrested in your figurative Memory of Matter series, figure in the pieces produced forReconstruction #1 at Sudeley? Do you think that your works address time, or its denial?

PS: In the Memory of Matter series I was trying to harness an impossible speed by firing tank shells directly at warm wax sculptures, revealing the creative and destructive power of ballistic impacts ‘energy, movement and time arrested.’ These were inspired by a study of large craters on the moon and a fascination with brute speed. Craters are like ‘wounds’ or ‘memories’ resulting from great energy and speed, the immediacy of their creation is of great interest to me. With the fluid vortex works it’s quite the opposite, the form constantly reinvents itself never twice the same. It addresses time by means of a computer-controlled turbine on a loop system that gains speed growing the vortex to full length and then back to motionlessness.

BM: The ‘crystal ball theory’ of your work suggests that the environment figures largely in the understanding of yourwork? What is the relationship between the environment and the work, and how is this relationship altered by thereflective quality of the medium?

PS: When one speaks of a solid sculpture that ‘resonates’ in a given room or atmosphere, with Space -Time the works vast optic medium attracts the viewers attention in a magnetic sort of way. It does so by condensing and pulling the space around it into the work, bringing the viewer by way of curiosity ever closer by way of its optical reconfiguration of the landscape. If one were to imagine the work surrounded by modern linear architecture it would function like a five-ton chameleon warping the surrounding linear geometry into a display of complex curvature. (continued)

OPTICS AnD ThE VOID

Space Time (2007)Reconstruction #1, Sudeley Castle, UK

Bell Jar 1.5 x 2m

BM: How does Space-Time, as itself a work of grand proportions re-interpret the previous work Event Horizon? What does the work accomplish that the Event Horizon did not?

Event Horizon, like many precious things is too small for its own good. When I say this I refer to the inner scale of thevortex. Leonardo Da Vinci once noted that the ideal scale of a work of art is proportioned to the human body. This isreconciled in Space-Time the inner trumpet of its vortex is proportioned to confront the human figure standing. By doing this it exerts both power and subtlety over the viewer, like a ‘monster of grace’.

BM: You have stated that your vortex works arose from a desire for movement, away from the predictability of static sculpture. Why in this effort have you chosen a liquid medium?

PS:My desire to orchestrate a liquid medium has come from humankind’s relationship to its most precious substance,water. Its properties are artistically largely untapped in urban contexts. A vortex is an icon of a liquid state, bothorder and chaos exist in its ever-changing curvature.

BM: How does the movement in your work relate to inevitably static architectural forms?

PS: On the one hand static architecture can be seen as a viewer encircles the sculpture, while on the other thevortex creates perpetual movement that replicates their position of constant visual flux with their environment.

BM: How have varying manifestations of scale affected reactions to your work?

PS: Each site demands a particular harmonic scale, so scale plays a central role within the work, larger worksincreasingly command larger aspects of physical space.

BM: What do you perceive as the principal challenges in installing works outdoors?

PS: Being able to engage successfully with the environment. The outdoors allows the work the possibility of engagingwith the earth’s surface, its elements and the sky. These are all challenges.

BM: Do you feel there are cultural or environmental limitations to the work?

PS: No, I don’t think the work has cultural or environmental limitations. It seeks to engage and enrich an experienceof the rural or urban environment.

BM: One of your works that includes a vortex is titled Vanishing Point, can you state how it got this title?

PS: It is partly to do with the architectural term of converging lines, of perspective, it reflects the sculpture’s abilityto engage the viewer with finite points of no return as lines continuously converge in the spiralling optics of thecentral vortex.

Right: Aerial detail of Space-Time permanent collection Kistefos Museum, Norway.

Animated, with at once a furious and sedating rhythm, by an ever changing vortex at its core, Vanishing Pointis one in a series of vessel like sculptures in constant,but variable motion: both static and fluid, dynamicand stable. Taking liquid curvature as its subject, this kinetic sculpture comprises a vast bell jar filled with a mercurial liquid which acts a “crystal ball”, consuming and reconfiguring the landscape in which it arrives.

Conceived in the city for the city, Vanishing Point seeks to develop a dialogue between architectureand sculpture by placing itself at ground level, position itself between the viewer and the concrete monumentality of the urban environment; it is a liquidlens through which the extra human architecture is compressed, distorted liquefied—acting as an life enhancing interface between the solid forms of the city-scape and the public’s daily flux.

“The two elements the traveler firstcaptures in the big city are extra human

architecture and furious rhythm”

-Fredrico Garcia Lorca

Proposal for Jean Nouvel Atelier 2011

text by Brooke McGowan

This vortex diagram shows the proposed relationbetween the tidal patterns of the sea and the vortex insidethe artwork. The computer controlled motor acceleratesand decelerates the vortex to mimic the sea.

TIDAL VORTEX: SHANGHAI NORTH CHINA SEA

Diameter of proposed sphere = 3.5m Diameter of Bell Jar = 3m x 2m

‘Leonardo da Vinci once noted that the ideal scale of a work of art is proportioned to the human body... the vortex is proportioned to confront

the human figure standing.By doing so, it hopes to exert its full power and subtlety on the viewer.’

-Petroc Sesti

Qi, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art

Fluid Sphere (2012)Corporate lobby proposal

Urban proposal for Fluid Sphere (2012)

HydrasphereLemos Collection (2012)

HydrasphereLemos Collection (2012)

Memory of Matter (Torso) (2005) Memory of Matter (Torso) (2005)

SUPERnOVAE SERIES

“We come from stars” ...... our bodies are composed of heavy elements derived from star dust, scientists have longclaimed. My fascination with the death of stars and black holes in outer space has been a strong influence on mywork. The sheer scale, complexity and pigmentation of supernovae captured by NASA’s Hubble space telescope,brought me to draw parallels with the form, colour and pigmentation of the human Iris. No two supernovae orhuman iris are alike. On the one hand they represent a sort of unique celestial signature distinct to each and everyone of us.

the title of each individual photographic print is named after a known location of a Supernovae in space, the death of a star.

Supernovae, Cygnus X-1

50” x 50” inch

Supernovae, M-31Andromeda

50” x 50” inch

Supernovae, Centaurus A50” x 50” inch

Octagon Blue, detail, New York (1999)

Bed of Nails, detail (2005) Glass and applied silver

Suspended Animation, detail (2005)

Left and this page: Fluid Hemispheres, detail, New York (2000)

Apoptosis, photographic plates, Rome (2000)

The work of Petroc Sesti pushes the boundaries of art and science, and goes beyond both. His work looks strangely new and feels oddly familiar. With the perpetual motion of Event Horizon, a liquid vortex contained in a bell jar, and the frozen time of Memory of Matter exploding wax torsos and heads caught in the stillness of a terminal violence, Sesti rivets our brain’s attention and kindles our need to explore the object. Once captured by the aura of the object we find something within it that releases us from its seductive grasp.

Sesti’s work confounds cognition and kindles curiosity. This is an art of subtle motion and intense emotion, of stillness and transcendence, of violence and silence, of time contained and time frozen. Sesti’s work is an irresistible invitation to the body, brain, and imagination. By tickling our brain’s ability to mirror itself in the object, Sesti succeeds in seducing the viewer into a world of speculation and anxiety.

Event Horizon bends light like a prism, its perpetual vortex hypnotizes the viewer. Reflecting on its everchanging spiral motion, a tiny tornado captured in a bell jar the turning world underfoot. To look deeper into the dancing mirror, perhaps we can glimpse timelessness.

text by Philip Romero

A MIRROR OF TIME

Wax, oil, tar, silicon, explosives… the corporeal materiality of Petroc Sesti’s work continues to inform his most recent work, paintings constructed from the controlled detonation of explosives.

Using specialist military technology Sesti expels liquid pigment by way explosive pressure waves across both the surface of the canvas and the interior surfaces of uniquely designed sculptural pavilions. The variable levels of explosive and variations in the source of the explosion enable control to be exercised over what otherwise remains a chance action. The visual outcome of the work marks and traces both the destructive and the sublime outcome of ejected material, revealing the cosmological aspirations of former works such as Vanishing Point 2008 and the grounding materiality of works such as Memory of Matter (2005). The work A World Apart (2007) sought to contain and re-present the naturally occurring phenomena of a vortex, creating and retaining it within a liquid filled bell jar, while Memory of Matter (2005) explored the physical effects of high-level propelled explosions on human wax torsos at body temperature.

Sesti’s latest works advance these agendas, while drawing inspiration from the transcendent and aestheticbeauty of supernovas; immaculate luminous stellar explosions that mark the ‘death of a star’, the works create acomplex visual outcome that marks a single moment in time. Stellar explosions mark points of profound beauty, gaseous masses displaying the results of exploding stars often a billion times brighter than the sun. Supernovas represent ultimate celestial events, it is this correlation of distance and proximity, of aesthetic beauty and destructive power that informs Sesti’s work and challenges the production of contemporary art.

text by Brooke McGowan

DEATh OF STARS

Space Wall, detonation study (2011)

Wax on black panel

PetRoC SeStIBorn in London 1973, Byam Shaw School of Art / Chelsea School of Art

SeLeCted exhIBItIonS2013 – Tsao Collection, Guilin China.

2013 – Turbulence, The Boghossian Foundation Brussels, Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium.

2013 – Qatar Foundation HQ, Doha UAE, (permanent collection.)

2012 – Power Station of Art, New Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art.

2012 – Theatre Of The World, Permanent Collection at Museum of Old and New Art Tasmania(Permanent Collection.)

2012 – Espace, Louis Vuitton Foundation, Champs Elysees Paris on June 2012.

2012 – Art HK, Hong Kong Art fair. 17-20 May 2012 View current projects for new press articles: New York Times

2012 – Science Gallery, ‘Surface Tension’ Dublin

2011 – Exhibition: ‘Italy 150 Years’ , Grosvenor Square, London

2011 – Shizaru Gallery, launch group show.

2011 – Eternad Gallery Dubai, British Art Today, New Works

2010 – Lemos Collection Greece, Hydrasphere

2009 – Tunnel 228, London: Perpetual Void

2008 – Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York: Vanishing Point

2008 – Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago: New works

2007 – T1+2, London: Avatar of Sacred Discontent, curated by Wolfe Lenklewicz and Flora Fairbaim

2007 – Kistefos Museum, Oslo, Norway: Space-Time – Addition to permanent collection

2007 – Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago: The Last Seduction, Event Horizon

2006 – Kinetica Museum, London: Magnetic Vision, Suspended Animation

2006 – Sudeley Castle: Reconstruction #1, Energy-Matter-Space-Time

2006 – Feigen Contemporary Gallery N.Y: Blessed Are The Merciful, curated by Jerome Jacobs

2005 – Riflemaker, London: Rifle Range, Memory of Matter

2005 – Areoplastics, Brussels: Oracle of Truth

2005 - Sudeley Castle: Vertigo, Event Horizon, Succession

2005 – Bruges Museum of Art, Belgium: Boost In The Shell, Memory of Matter, Succession

2004 - Areoplastics Gallery, Brussels: Dreamscapes, Fluid Icon

2004 – Museum 52, Zoo Art Fair, London: Memory of Matter, Fluid Hemisphere

2003 – Fame And Promise, London: Negative Grid / Positive Grid

2001 – The Lisson Gallery, London: A Shot In The Head, London Water

2000 – Stefania Michetti, Rome: Anableps, Medium-Gage

1999 – Art Space, New York: D.U.M.B.O, Fluid Gages

1998 – Spazio Bigli, Milan: Colours Of Vanishing Tribes

1998 – Art Space, New York: D.U.M.B.O, Octagon

1998 – Ace Gallery, New York: Vessel, curated by Icon Magazine, Ikons

Collections:Gerry Speyer, Rockefeller Collection, New York / Donna Karan, New York / Mollie Dent Broklehurst, London /Qatar Foundation HQ, Doha

UAE / Alan Rickman, London / Mario Testino, London / Gillian Anderson, London / Mona Museum, Australia / David Roberts, London /

Rosthschild Collection, New York / Bernhard Starkmann, London / Kistephos Museum, Norway / Mr Tsao Collection, Guilin, China

Contact:email: petroc@petrocsesti.com telephone: +44 (0)7880 632377

Back cover: Supernovae, Cygnus X-1

Studio test, Detonation (2008)